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http://www.archive.org/details/fleetstreetotherOOdaviiala 


BY  JOHN  DAVIDSON 

Plays 

Ballads  and  Songs 

New  Ballads 

Fleet  Street  Eclogues 

Godfrida 

The  Last  Ballad  and  Other  Poems 

A  Rosary 

Holiday  and  Other  Poems 

Selected  Poems 

A  Random   Itinerary 

Self's  the  Man 

The  Knight  of  the  Maypole 

The  Testament  of  a  Vivisector 

The  Testament  of  a  Man  Forbid 

The  Testament  of  an   Empire  Builder 

The  Theatrocrat 

Mammon  and  His  Message 

The  Triumph  of  Mammon 


FLEET  STREET 

and  other  poems 


By 

JOHN  DAVIDSON 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

LONDON:    GRANT  RICHARDS 

1909 


Copyright  IQOQ 
by  Mitchell  Kennerley 


The  time  has  come  to  make  an  end.  There  are 
several  motives.  I  find  my  pension  is  not  enough; 
I  have  therefore  still  to  turn  aside  and  attempt 
things  for  which  people  will  pay.  My  health  also 
counts.  Asthma  and  other  annoyances  I  have  tol- 
erated for  years;  but  I  cannot  put  up  with  cancer. 

I  thought  this  might  be  my  last  book,  and  in- 
tended five  poems,  "  Cain,"  "  Judas,"  "  Caesar  Bor- 
gia," "  Calvin,"  and  "  Cromwell "  under  the  gen- 
eral title,  "When  God  Meant  God,"  to  be  the 
principal  contents.  "  Cain "  is  the  only  one  of 
these  poems  which  I  have  written.  I  should  have 
concluded  the  volume  with  a  second  Testament  in 
my  own  person,  insisting  that  men  should  no  longer 
degrade  themselves  under  such  appellations  as 
Christian,  Mohammedan,  Agnostic,  Monist,  etc 
Men  are  the  Universe  become  conscious:  the  sim- 
plest man  should  consider  himself  too  great  to  be 
called  after  any  name. 

J.  D. 


CONTENTS 


1 

PAGE 

FLEET  STREET 

X 

SONG 

II 

THE  CRYSTAL  PALACE 

13 

RAILWAY    STATIONS: 

LONDON    BRIDGE 

25 

LIVERPOOL  STREET 

30 

IN  THE  CITY 

43 

CAIN 

45 

ECLOGUES: 

THE  FEAST  OF  ST.  HILARY 

61 

ST.  VALENTINE'S  DAY 

70 

SNOW 

75 

THE   TESTAMENT   OF    SIR   SIMON    SIMPLEX 

CONCERNING    AUTOMOBILISM 

79 

THE  CAKE  OF  MITHRIDATES 

88 

THE  LUTANIST 

92 

ST.   MICHAEL'S   MOUNT 

95 

TWO  DOGS 

96 

THE  WASP 

IOI 

THE  THAMES  EMBANKMENT 

103 

THE  ARISTOCRAT  OF.  THE  ROAD 

107 

ROAD   AND   RAIL 

112 

SONG  FOR  THE  TWENTY-FOURTH  OF  MAY 

Il8 

FLEET   STREET 

Wisps  and  rags  of  cloud  in  a  withered  sky, 
A  strip  of  pallid  azure,  at  either  end, 
Above  the  Ludgate  obelisk,  above 
The  Temple  griffin,  widening  with  the  width 
Below,  and  parallel  with  the  street  that  counts 
Seven  hundred  paces  of  tesselated  road 
From  Ludgate  Circus  west  to  Chancery  Lane: 
By  concrete  pavement  flanked  and  precipice 
Of  windowed  fronts  on  this  side  and  on  that, 
A  thoroughfare  of  everything  that  hastes, 
The  sullen  tavern-loafers  notwithstanding 
And  hawkers  in  the  channel  hunger-bit. 

Interfluent  night  and  day  the  tides  of  trade, 
Labour  and  pleasure,  law  and  crime,  are  sucked 
From  every  urban  quarter:     through  this  strait 
All  business  London  pours.     Amidst  the  boom 
And  thud  of  wheel  and  hoof  the  myriad  feet 
Are  silent  save  to  him  who  stands  a  while 
And  hearkens  till  his  passive  ear,  attuned 
To  new  discernment  like  an  erudite 
Musician's,  which  can  follow  note  by  note 
The  part  of  any  player  even  in  the  din 


i,  FLEET   STREET 

And  thrashing  fury  of  the  noisiest  close 
Orchestral,   hears   chromatic   footsteps   throb 
And  tense  susurrant  speech  of  multitudes 
That  stride  in  pairs  discussing  ways  and  means, 
Or  reason  with  themselves,  in  single  file 
Advancing  hardily  on  ruinous 
Events;  and  should  he  listen  long  there  comes 
A  second-hearing  like  the  second-sight 
Diviners  knew,  or  as  the  runner  gains 
His  second-breath;  then  phantom  footsteps  fall, 
And  muffled  voices  travel  out  of  time: 
Alsatians  pass  and  Templars;  stareabouts 
For  the  new  motion  of  Nineveh;  morose 
Or  jolly  tipplers  at  the  Bolt-in-Tun, 
The  Devil  Tavern;  Johnson's  heavy  tread 
And   rolling  laughter;   Drayton  trampling  out 
The  thunder  of  Agincourt  as  up  and  down 
He  paces  by  St.  Dunstan's;  Chaucer,  wroth, 
Beating  the  friar  that  traduced  the  State; 
And  more  remote,  from  centuries  unknown, 
Rumour  of  battle,  noises  of  the  swamp, 
The  gride  of  glacial  rock,  the  rush  of  wings, 
The  roar  of  beasts  that  breathed  a  fiery  air 
Where   fog  envelops  now  electric  light, 
The  music  of  the  spheres,  the  humming  speed 
Centrifugal   of   molten   planets   loosed 
From  pregnant  suns  to  find  their  orbits  out, 
The  whirling  spindles  of  the  nebulae, 


FLEET   STREET  3 

The  rapture  of  ethereal  darkness  strung 
Illimitable  in  eternal  space. 

Fleet  Street  was  once  a  silence  in  the  ether. 

The  carbon,  iron,  copper,  silicon, 

Zinc,    aluminium   vapours,   metalloids, 

Constituents  of  the  skeleton  and  shell 

Of  Fleet  Street — of  the  woodwork,  metalwork, 

Brickwork,   electric  apparatus,   drains 

And    printing-presses,    conduits,   pavement,    road — 

Were  at  the  first  unelemented  space, 

Imponderable  tension  in  the  dark 

Consummate  matter  of  eternity. 

And  so  the  flesh  and  blood  of  Fleet  Street,  nerve 

And  brain  infusing  life  and  soul,  the  men, 

The  women,  woven,  built  and  kneaded  up 

Of  hydrogen,  of  azote,  oxygen, 

Of  carbon,  phosphorus,  chlorine,  sulphur,  iron, 

Of  calcium,  kalium,  natrum,  manganese, 

The  warm  humanities  that  day  and  night 

Inhabit  and  employ  it  and  inspire, 

Were  in  the  ether  mingled  with  it,  there 

Distinguished  nothing  from  the  road,  the  shops, 

The   drainpipes,   sewage,   sweepings   of   the   street: 

Matter  of  infinite  beauty  and  delight 

Atoning  offal,   filth   and  all  offence 

With  soul  and  intellect,  with  love  and  thought; 

Matter  whereof  the  furthest  stars  consist, 


FLEET   STREET 

And  every  interstellar  wilderness 
From  galaxy  to  galaxy,  the  thin 
Imponderable  ether,  matter's  ghost, 
But   matter   still,   substance   demonstrable 
Being  the  icy  vehicle  of  light. 

Flung  off  in  teardrops  spirally,  or  cast 
In  annular  fission  forth  like  Saturn's  hoops, 
Earth  and  the  planets  girdled  solar  space, 
The  offspring  and  the  suburbs  of  the  sun. 
In  rings  or  drops — the  learned  are  unresolved 
How  planets  and  their  satellites  arrive; 
But  vision,  vouching  both,  is  more  obsessed 
By  Saturn's  way  of  circles  here  at  hand. 
Saturn  has  uttered  many  moons;  his  rings 
May  be  the  last  abortive  birth  of  powers 
Luniparous  unmatched  in  heaven;  or  else 
These  still-born  undeveloped  satellites 
Denote  an  overweening  confidence 
Determined,  risking  all,  on  something  new. 
Having  outstreated  spirally  and  well 
A  brilliant  series  of  customary  moons, 
The  hazardous  and  genial  orb  began 
A  segregation  annular  instead, 
Attempting  boldly  the  impossible, 
Thus  to  become  the  wonder  of  the  skies 
For  ever  hampered  with  the  rings  we  see 
Stupendous  error  still  eclipses  net 


FLEET    STREET  5 

Achievement;  as  in  art  the  Sistine  roof 
Sublimely  figured,  or  hardihood  in  war 
That  wastes  a  troop  for  glory,  or  as  earth 
In  sheer  terrestrial  wantonness  flung  up 
The  Maripesan  Vale,  so  in  the  skies 
The  most  enchanting  vision  of  the  night, 
Our  belted  Saturn  shines,  extravagance 
Celestial  jewelled  with  its  dazzling  fault. 

Now,  in  the  ether  with  all  the  universe, 

And  in  the  nebula  of  our  solar  scheme, 

Fleet  Street  and  Saturn's  rings  were  interfused, 

One  mass  of  molecules  being  set  apart 

For  the  high  theme  of  wonder  and  the  butt 

Of  speculation,  and  the  other  doomed, 

Although     the    most    renowned     throughout    the 

world, 
To  be  a  little  noisy  London  street. 
How  think  we  then?     The  metal,  stone  and  lime, 
Brick,  asphalt,  wood,  the  matter  that  renews 
The  shell  of  Fleet  Street,  does  it  still  begrudge 
The  luminous  zones  with  which  it  once  was  blent 
Their  lofty  glory?    Or  must  the  carapace 
Of  Fleet  Street,  welded  of  the  self-same  stuff 
As  man,  be  utterly  oblivious?     Thought 
And  passion,  envy,  joy — are  these  unfelt 
By  carbon,  iron,  azote,  oxygen, 
And  other  liberal  substances  that  know, 


6  FLEET    STREET 

Rejoice  and  suffer  in  mankind,  when  power 

Selective  turns  them  into  street?    Things  wrought 

By  us,  are  they,  too,  psychophysical? 

Do  these  piled  storeys  and  purlieus  quaint  of  square 

And  alley  envy  Saturn's  belts — a  brief, 

Not  outwardly  distinguished  urban  street 

Upon   a  planet  only  remarkable 

Among  the  spheres  for  insignificance, 

And  they  so  lovely  and  unparagoned 

A  thousand  million  of  mundane  miles  away? 

Are  able  editors,  leader-writers,  apt 

Telegraphists  and  printers,  the  only  soul 

In  Fleet  Street,  they,  its  only  consciousness? 

Perhaps  the  bricks  remember.     Who  can  tell 

When  filthy  fog  comes  down  and  lights  are  out, 

Machinery  still,   and   traffic  at  the  ebb, 

If  idle  streets  with  time  to  meditate 

Resent  enforced  passivity?     I  think 

The  admirable  patience  of  the  bricks 

May  fail  them  of  a  Sunday.     Imagine  it: 

To  be  for  ages  unalterable  brick, 

Sans  speech  or  motion,  nameless  in  a  wall 

Among  a  million  bricks  alike  unknown! 

I  think  the  splendid  patience  of  the  bricks 
Gives  out  in  darkness  and  foul  weather,  even 
To  the  length  of  envying  the  wonderful 
Exalted  destiny  of  Saturn's  belts; 


FLEET    STREET  7 

And  then  I  long  to  tell  them,  if  I  could, 

How  much  more  happy  their  condition  is 

Than  that  of  rubbish  revolving  endlessly 

In  agonies  of  impotent  remorse 

About  the  planet  it  deserted.     Thus 

Should  I  exhort  them: — "Bricks,  beloved  bricks, 

My  brethren  of  the  self-same  ether  bred, 

I  hold  it  very  beautiful  of  you 

To  think  so  handsomely  of  Saturn's  rings, 

Your  old  companions  in  the  nebula; 

But  I  can  tell  you  and  I'll  make  you  know, 

Your  fate  is  no  inferior  to  theirs. 

These  seeming  jewelled  zones  that  shine  so  bright 

Are  the  mere  wreck  of  matter,  broken  bits, 

Detached  and  grinding  beaches  of  barren  rock 

Hung  up  there  as  a  menace  and  a  sign; 

Circular  strips  of  chaos  unredeemed, 

Whirling  in  madness  of  oppugnant  powers. 

Whether  his  rings  are  Saturn's  own  attempt, 

Abnormal  and  abortive,  a  brilliant  ninth 

Consummate  moon  to  utter,  or  likelier  still, 

A  leash  of  runaway  material  tides 

That  mutinously  left  their  native  orb 

In  molten  youth  to  show  all  other  stars 

The  real  and  only  way  to  shine,  and  failed 

Inevitably,  being  immature, 

They  are,  beyond  all  doubt,  unhappy  zones, 

Forlorn,  remorseful,  useless  and  ashamed. 


8  FLEET    STREET 

Most  beautiful,  I  grant  you;  beautiful 

And  useless,  like  all  art:  their  fate  it  is 

To  be  an  agony  of  beauty,  art 

Inutile,  unavailing,  misconceived. 

But  you,  most  genial,  intellectual  bricks, 

Most  dutiful  and  most  important,  you 

Are  indispensable,  an  integral 

Component  of  the  world's  most  famous  street. 

Within  your  wholesome  and  convenient  bield 

The  truest  miracle  is  daily  done. 

"  Never  forget  that  men  have  tamed  and  taught 
The  lightning;  clad  it  in  a  livery  known 
As  news;  and  that  without  your  constant  aid 
Our  modern,  actual  magic,  black  and  white, 
Momentous  mystery  of  telegraphy, 
Resounding  press,  accomplished  intellects 
And  pens  expert  would  be  impossible. 
Take  down  the  walls  your  myrmidons  compose, 
And  Fleet  Street,  soul  and  body,  ceases — fog 
Unoccupied,  wind,  city  sunshine  sparse 
And  pallid  claiming  all  the  room  that  now, 
Enclosed,  accoutred,  functioned,  named  and  known, 
Serves  as  the  Dionysius'  ear  of  the  world. 
Honour  and  excellence  and  praise  are  yours; 
Be  satisfied;  be  glad." 

But  all  the  bricks, 


FLEET    STREET  9 

O'erburdened    and    begrimed,    in    chorus    sighed, 
And  as  one  brick,  "  Upon  my  cubical 
Content,  and  by  our  common  mother,  I 
Had  rather  shine,  a  shard  of  chaos,  set 
In  Saturn's  glistering  rings,  the  exquisite 
Enigma  of  the  night,  than  be  the  unnamed, 
Unthought-of  copestone  or  foundation-stone 
Of  any  merely  world-distinguished  street." 

Applauding  the  ambition  of  the  bricks, 
I  felt,  I  also,  I  would  rather  share 
Dazzling  perdition  with  material  wreck 
Suspended  in  majestic  agony 
About  the  withered  loins  of  some  undone 
Wide-circling  planet  for  the  universe 
To  see,  than  live  the  dull  life  of  a  baked 
Oblength  of  tempered  clay,  year  in  year  out 
Unnoticed  in  a  murky,  mundane  street; 
But  recollecting  that  the  bricks  were  bricks 
And  not  a  planetary  wonder,  what 
Event  soe'er  awaits  the  world  and  time, 
I  reassured  them :     "  Gallant  souls,"  I  cried, 
"  Noble  and  faithful  bricks,  be  not  dismayed ! 
I  hear  the  shapeless  fragments  that  make  up 
./Esthetic  marvel  in  Saturn's  girdles  sigh 
Disconsolately,  as  they  chafe  and  grind 
Each  other, — Such  an  enviable  fate 
As  that  of  any  single  solid  brick 


io  FLEET   STREET 

In  Fleet  Street,  London,  well  and  truly  laid, 

A  moulded,  tempered,  necessary  brick 

In  that  most  famous  faubourg  of  the  world, 

Exceeds  our  merits!     Could  we  but  attain 

The  crude  integrity  of  commonplace 

Cohesion  even  in  the  most  exhausted,  most 

Decrepit,  ruinous,  forgotten   orb 

In  some  back  alley  of  the  Milky  Way 

How  happy  we  should  be!     Remember,  bricks, 

Neither  success  nor  failure  envy  spares: 

Use  envies  art;  art  envies  use.     These  moods 

Will  come,  but  regular  bricks  like  you  transcend 

Them  always.     Be  courageous;  be  yourselves, 

Be  proud  of  your  telluric  destiny." 

With  that  the  bricks  took  heart :  "  Why,  so  we  are," 
They  said,  "  the  ear  of  England !     Let  us  be 
Old  England's  ear !  "     And  revolution  beat 
In  smothered  cries  and  muffled  fusillades 
Upon  the  trembling  tympanal;  empires 
At  war  thridded  the  sounding  labyrinth 
With  cannon;  loyal  peoples  through  the  sea 
And  through  the  air  by  auditory  nerves 
Electric  from  the  quarters  of  the  earth 
And  from  a  hundred  isles,  their  homage  sent 
With  whispered  news  of  aspirations,  deeds, 
Achievements  to  the  Mother  of  Nations,  she 
Whose  ever  vigilant,  clairaudient  ear 
Is  Fleet  Street. 


SONG 

Closes  and  courts  and  lanes, 

Devious,  clustered  thick, 
The  thoroughfare,  mains  and  drains, 

People  and  mortar  and  brick, 
Wood,  metal,  machinery,  brains, 
Pen  and  composing  stick: 

Fleet  Street,  but  exquisite  flame 

In  the  nebula  once  ere  day  and  night 
Began  their  travail,  or  earth  became, 
And  all  was  passionate  light. 

Networks  of  wire  overland, 

Conduits  under  the  sea, 
Aerial  message  from  strand  to  strand 

By  lightning  that  travels  free, 
Hither  in  haste  to  hand 
Tidings  of  destiny 

These  tingling  nerves  of  the  world's  affairs 

Deliver  remorseless,  rendering  still 
The  fall  of  empires,  the  price  of  shares, 
The  record  of  good  and  ill. 

Tidal  the  traffic  goes 

Citywards  out  of  the  town; 
ii 


i3  SONG 

Townwards  the  evening  ebb  o'erflows 

This  highway  of  old  renown, 
When  the  fog-woven  curtains  close, 
And  the  urban  night  comes  down, 

Where  souls  are  spilt  and  intellects  spent 

O'er  news  vociferant  near  and  far, 
From  Hesperus  hard  to  the  Orient, 
From  dawn  to  the  evening  star. 

This  is  the  royal  refrain 

That  burdens  the  boom  and  the  thud 
Of  omnibus,  mobus,  wain, 

And  the  hoofs  on  the  beaten  mud, 
From  the  Griffin  at  Chancery  Lane 
To  the  portal  of  old  King  Lud — 
Fleet  Street,  diligent  night  and  day, 

Of  news  the  mart  and  the  burnished  hearth, 
Seven  hundred  paces  of  narrow  way, 
A  notable  bit  of  the  earth. 


THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE 

Contraption, — that's  the  bizarre,  proper  slang, 

Eclectic  word,  for  this  portentous  toy, 

The  flying-machine,  that  gyrates  stiffly,  arms 

A-kimbo,  so  to  say,  and  baskets  slung 

From  every  elbow,  skating  in  the  air. 

Irreverent,  we;  but  Tartars  from  Thibet 

May  deem  Sir  Hiram  the  Grandest  Lama,  deem 

His  volatile  machinery  best,  and  most 

Magnific,  rotatory  engine,  meant 

For  penitence  and  prayer  combined,  whereby 

Petitioner  as  well  as  orison 

Are  spun  about  in  space:  a  solemn  rite 

Before  the  portal  of  that  fane  unique, 

Victorian  temple  of  commercialism, 

Our  very  own  eighth  wonder  of  the  world, 

The  Crystal  Palace. 

So  sublime!     Like  some 
Immense  crustacean's  gannoid    skeleton, 
Unearthed,  and  cleansed,  and  polished!    Were  it  so 
Our  paleontological  respect 

Would  shield  it  from  derision:  but  when  a  shed, 
Intended  for  a  palace,  looks  as  like 
The  fossil  of  a  giant  myriapod!  .... 
13 


14  THE    CRYSTAL   PALACE 

'Twas  Isabey — sarcastic  wretch! — who   told 
A  young  aspirant,  studying  tandem  art 
And  medicine,  that  he  certainly  was  born 
To  be  a  surgeon:    "  When  you  try,"  he  said, 
"  To  paint  a  boat  you  paint  a  tumour." 

No 
Idea  of  its  purpose,  and  no  word 
Can  make  your  glass  and  iron  beautiful. 
Colossal  ugliness  may  fascinate 
If  something  be  expressed;  and  time  adopts 
Ungainliest  stone  and  brick  and  ruins  them 
To  beauty;  but  a  building  lacking  life, 
A  house  that  must  not  mellow  or  decay? — 
'Tis  nature's  outcast.     Moss  and  lichen?     Stains 
Of  weather?     From  the  first  Nature  said  "No! 
Shine  there  unblessed,  a  witness  of  my  scorn! 
I  love  the  ashlar  and  the  well-baked  clay: 
My  seasons  can  adorn  them  sumptuously: 
But  you  shall  stand  rebuked  till  men  ashamed, 
Abhor  you,  and  destroy  you  and  repent ! " 

But  come :  here's  crowd ;  here's  mob ;  a  gala  day ! 
The  walks  are  black  with  people:  no  one  hastes; 
They  all  pursue  their  purpose  business-like — 
The  polo-ground,  the  cycle  track;  but  most 
Invade  the  palace  glumly  once  again. 
It  is  "  again  " ;  you  feel  it  in  the  air — 
Resigned  habitues  on  every  hand: 


THE    CRYSTAL   PALACE  i5 

And  yet  agog;  abandoned,  yet  concerned! 
They  can't  tell  why  they  come;  they  only  know 
They   must   shove   through   the   holiday   somehow. 

In  the  main  floor  the  fretful  multitude 
Circulates  from  the  north  nave  to  the  south 
Across  the  central  transept — swish  and  tread 
And  murmur,  like  a  seaboard's  mingled  sound. 
About    the   sideshows    eddies    swirl    and    swing: 
Distorting   mirrors ;   waltzing-tops — wherein 
Couples  are  wildly  spun  contrariwise 
To  your  revolving  platform;  biographs, 
Or  rifle-ranges;  panoramas:  choose! 

As  stupid  as  it  was  last  holiday? 

They  think  so, — every  whit!     Outside,  perhaps? 

A  spice  of  danger  in  the  flying-machine? 

A  few  who  passed  that  whirligig,  their  hopes 

On  higher  things,  return  disconsolate 

To  try  the  Tartar's  volant  oratory. 

Others  again,  no  more  anticipant 

Of  any  active  business  in  their  own 

Diversion,  joining  stalwart  folk  who  sought 

At  once  the  polo-ground,  the  cycle-track, 

Accept  the  includible;  while  some 

(Insidious  anti-climax  here)  frequent 

The  water-entertainments — shallops,  chutes 

And  rivers  subterrene: — thus,  passive,  all, 


1 6  THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE 

Like  savages  bewitched,  submit  at  last 
To  be  the  dupes  of  pleasure,  sadly  gay — 
Victims,  and  not  companions,  of  delight. 

Not  all!    The  garden-terrace: — hark,  behold, 

Music  and  dancing!     People  by  themselves 

Attempting  happiness!     A  box  of  reeds — 

Accordion,  concertina,   seraphine — 

And  practised  fingers  charm  advertent  feet! 

The  girls  can  dance,  but,  O  their  heavy-shod 

Unwieldy   swains! — No   matter: — hatless   heads, 

With  hair  undone,  eyes  shut  and  cheeks  aglow 

On  blissful  shoulders  lie: — such  solemn  youths 

Sustaining  ravished  donahs!     Round  they  swing, 

In  time  or  out,  but  unashamed  and  all 

Enchanted  with  the  glory  of  the  world. 

And  look! — Among  the  laurels  on  the  lawns 

Torn  coats  and  ragged  skirts,  starved  faces  flushed 

With  passion  and  with  wonder! — hid  away 

Avowedly;  but  seen — and  yet  not  seen! 

None  laugh;  none  point;   none   notice:  multitude 

Remembers  and  forgives;  unwisest  love 

Is  sacrosanct  upon  a  holiday. 

Out  of  the  slums,  into  the  open  air 

Let  loose  for  once,  their  scant  economies 

Already  spent,  what  was  there  left  to  do? 

O  sweetly,  tenderly,  devoutly  think, 

Shepherd  and  Shepherdess  in  Arcady! 


THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE  17 

A  heavy  shower;  the  Palace  fills;  begins 

The  business  and  the  office  of  the  day, 

The  eating  and  the  drinking — only  real 

Enjoyment  to  be  had,  they  tell  you  straight 

Now  that  the  shifty  weather  fails  them  too. 

But  what's  the  pother  here,  the  blank  dismay? 

Money  has  lost  its  value  at  the  bars: 

Like  tavern-tokens  when  the  Boar's  Head  rang 

With  laughter  and  the  Mermaid  swam  in  wine, 

Tickets  are  now  the  only  currency. 

Before  the  buffets,  metal  tables  packed 

As  closely  as  mosaic,  with  peopled  chairs 

Cementing  them,  where  damsels  in  and  out 

Attend  with  food,  like  disembodied  things 

That  traverse  rock  as  easily  as  air — 

These  are  the  havens,  these  the  happy  isles! 

A  dozen  people  fight  for  every  seat — 

Without  a  quarrel,  unturbulently :     O, 

A  peaceable,  a  tame,  a  timorous  crowd! 

And  yet  relentless:  this  they  know  they  need; 

Here  have  they  money's  worth — some  food,  some 

drink; 
And  so  alone,  in  couples,  families,  groups, 
Consuming   and   consumed — for   as  they  munch 
Their  victuals  all  their  vitals  ennui  gnaws — 
They  sit  and  sit,  and  fain  would  sit  it  out 
In  tedious  gormandize  till  firework-time. 
But  business  beats  them:  those  who  sit  must  eat. 


18  THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE 

Tickets  are  purchased   at  besieged  kiosks, 

And     when     their     value's  spent — with     such     a 

grudge! — 
They  rise  to  buy  again,  and  lose  their  seats; 
For  this  is  Mob,  unhappy  locust-swarm, 
Instinctive,  apathetic,  ravenous. 

Beyond  a  doubt  a  most  unhappy  crowd! 
Some  scores  of  thousands  searching  up  and  down 
The  north  nave  and  the  south  nave  hungrily 
For  space  to  sit  and  rest  to  eat  and  drink; 
Or  captives  in  a  labyrinth,  or  herds 
Imprisoned  in  a  vast  arena;  here 
A  moment  clustered;  there  entangled;  now 
In  reaches  sped  and  now  in  whirlpools  spun 
With  noises  like  the  wind  and  like  the  sea, 
But  silent  vocally:  they  hate  to  speak: 
Crowd :    Mob :  a  blur  of  faces  featureless, 
Of  forms  inane;  a  stranded  shoal  of  folk. 

Astounding  in  the  midst  of  this  to  meet 
Voltaire,  the  man  who  worshipped  first,  who  made 
Indeed,  the  only  god  men  reverence  now, 
Public  Opinion.     There  he  sits  alert — 
A  cast  of  Houdon's  smiling  philosophy. 
Old  lion-fox,  old  tiger-ape — what  names 
They  gave  him! — better  charactered  by  one 
Who  was  his  heir:     "The  amiable  and  gay." 


THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE  19 

So  said  the  pessimist  who  called  life  sour 

And  drank  it  to  the  dregs.     Enough:     Voltaire — 

About  to  speak :  hands  of  a  mummy  clutch 

The  fauteuil's  arms;  he  listens  to  the  last 

Before  reply;  one  foot  advanced;  a  new 

Idea  radiant  in  his  wrinkled  face. 

Lunch  in  the  grill-room  for  the  well-to-do, 
The  spendthrifts  and   the   connoisseurs  of   food — 
Gourmet,  gourmand,  bezonian,  epicure. 
Reserved  seats  at  the  window? — Surely;  you 
And  I  must  have  the  best  place  everywhere. 
A  deluge  smudges  out  the  landscape.    Watch 
The  waiters  since  the  scenery's  not  on  view. 
A  harvest-day  with  them,  our  Switzers — knights 
Of  the  napkin !     How  they  balance  loaded  trays, 
And,  though  they  push  each  other,  spill  no  drop! 
And  how  they  glare  at  lazy  lunchers,  snatch 
Unfinished  plates  sans  "  by  your  leave,"  and  fling 
The  next  dish  down,  before  the  dazzled  lout 
(The  Switzer  knows  his  man)   has  time  to  con 
The  menu,  every  tip  precisely  gaged, 
Precisely  earned,  no  service  thrown  away. 
Sign  of  an  extra  douceur,  reprimand 
Is  welcomed,  and  the  vatetudinous 
Voluptuary  served  devoutly:  he 
With  cauteries  on  his  cranium ;  dyed  moustache ; 
Teeth  like  a  sea-wolf's,  each  a  work  of  art 


2o  THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE 

Numbered  and  valued  singly;  copper  skin; 

And  nether  eyelids  pouched: — why  he  alone 

Is  worth  a  half-day's  wage!    Waiters  for  him 

Are  pensioners  of  indigestion,  paid 

As  secret  criminals  disburse  blackmail, 

As  Attic  gluttons  sacrificed  a  cock 

To  i^Esculapius  to  propitiate 

Hygeia — if  the  classic  flourish  serves! 

"Grilled  soles?" — for  us: — Kidneys  to  follow. — 

Now, 
Your  sole,  sir;  eat  it  with  profound  respect. 
A  little  salt  with  one  side: — scarce  a  pinch! 
The  other  side  with  lemon: — tenderly! 
Don't  crush  the  starred  bisection : — count  the  drops ! 
Those  who  begin  with  lemon  miss  the  true 
Aroma:  quicken  sense  with  salt,  and  then 
The  subtle,  poignant,  critic  savour  tunes 
The  delicate  texture  of  the  foam-white  fish, 
Evolving  palatable  harmony 
That  music  might  by  happy  chance  express. 
A  crust  of  bread — (eat  slowly:  thirty  chews, 
Gladstonian  rumination) — to  change  the  key. 
And  now  the  wine — a  well-decanted,  choice 
Chateau,  bon  per;  a  decade  old;  not  more. 
A  velvet  claret,  piously  unchilled. 
A  boiled  potato  with  the  kidney     .     .     .     No! 
Barbarian!     Vandal!     Sauce?     'Twould  ruin  all! 


THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE  21 

The  kidney's  the  potato's  sauce.     Perpend: 

You  taste  the  esoteric  attribute 

In  food;  and  know  that  all  necessity 

Is  beauty's  essence.     Fill  your  glass:  salute 

The  memory  of  the  happy  neolith 

Who  had  the  luck  to  hit  on  roast  and  boiled. 

Finish  the  claret. — Now  the  rain  has  gone 

The  clouds  are  winnowed  by  the  sighing  south, 

And  hidden  sunbeams  through  a  silver  woof 

A  warp  of  pallid  bronze  in  secret  ply. 

Cigars  and  coffee  in  the  billiard-room. 

No  soul  here  save  the  marker,  eating  chops; 

The  waiter  and  the  damsel  at  the  bar, 

In  listless  talk.     A  most  uncanny  thing, 

To  enter  suddenly  a  desolate  cave 

Upon  the  margent  of  the  sounding  Mob! 

A  hundred  thousand  people,  class  and  mass, 

In  and  about  the  palace,  and  not  a  pair 

To  play  a  hundred  up!     The  billiard-room's 

The    smoking-room;    and    spacious    too,    like    all 

The  apartments  of  the  Palace: — why 

Unused  on  holidays?     The  marker:     aged; 

Short,  broad,  but  of  a  presence;  reticent 

And  self-respecting;  not  at  all  the  type: — 

"  O  well,"  says  he ;  "  the  business  of  the  room 

Fluctuates  very  little,  year  in,  year  out. 

My  customers  are  seasons  mostly."     One 


23  THE    CRYSTAL   PALACE 

On  the  instant  enters:  a  curate,  very  much 

At  ease  in  Zion — and  in  Sydenham. 

He  tells  too  funny  stories — not  of  the  room: 

And  talks  about  the  stage.      "  In  London  now," 

He  thinks,  "  the  play's  the  thing."  He  undertakes 

To  entertain  and  not  to  preach:  you  see, 

It's  with  the  theatre  and  the  music-hall, 

Actor  and  artiste,  the  parson  must  compete. 

Every  bank-holiday  and  special  day 

The  Crystal  Palace  sees  him.     Yes;  he  feels 

His  hand's  upon  the  public  pulse  on  such 

Occasions.     O,  a  sanguine  clergyman! 

Heard  in  the  billiard-room  the  sound  of  Mob, 
Occult  and  ominous,  besets  the  mind: 
Something  gigantic,  something  terrible 
Passes  without;  repasses;  lingers;  goes; 
Returns  and  on  the  threshold  pants  in  doubt 
Whether  to  knock  and  enter,  or  burst  the  door 
In  hope  of  treasure  and  a  living  prey. 
The  vainest  fantasy!     Rejoin  the  crowd: 
At  once  the  sound  depreciates.     Up  and  down 
The  north  nave  and  the  south  nave  hastily 
Some  tens  of  thousands  walk,  silent  and  sad, 
A  most  unhappy  people. — Hereabout 
Cellini's  Perseus  ought  to  be.     Not  that; 
That's  stucco — and  Canova's:  a  stupid  thing: 
The  face  and  posture  of  a  governess — 


THE    CRYSTAL   PALACE  33 

A  nursery  governess  who's  had  the  nerve 
To  pick  a  dead  mouse  up.     It  used  to  stand 
Beside  the  billiard-room,  against  the  wall, 
A  cast  of  Benvenuto's  masterpiece — 
That  came  out  lame,  as  he  pretold,  despite 
His  dinner  dishes  in  the  foundry  flung. 

They  shift  their  sculpture  here  haphazard. — That? 

King  Francis — by  Clesinger: — on  a  horse. 

Absurd:  most  mounted  statues  are. — And  this? 

Verrochio's  Coleone.     Not  absurd: 

Grotesque  and  strong,  the  battle-harlot  rides 

A  stallion:  fore  and  aft,  his  saddle,  peaked 

Like  a  mitre,  grips  him  as  in  a  vice. 

In  heavy  armour  mailed;  his  lifted  helm 

Reveals  his  dreadful  look;  his  brows  are  drawn; 

Four  wrinkles  deeply  trench  his  muscular  face; 

His  left  arm  half -extended,  and  the  reins 

Held  carelessly,  although  the  gesture's  tense; 

His  right  hand  wields  a  sword  invisible; 

Remorseless  pressure  of  his  lips  protrudes 

His  mouth;  he  would  decapitate  the  world. 

The  light  is  artificial  now;  the  place 
Phantasmal  like  a  beach  in  hell  where  souls 
Are  ground  together  by  an  unseen  sea. 
A  dense  throng  in  the  central  transept,  wedged 
So  tightly  they  can  neither  clap  nor  stamp, 


24  THE    CRYSTAL    PALACE 

Shouting  applause  at  something,  goad  themselves 

In  sheer  despair  to  think  it  rather  fine: 

"  We  came  here  to  enjoy  ourselves.     Bravo, 

Then !     Are  we  not  ?  "     Courageous  folk  beneath 

The  brows  of  Michael  Angelo's  Moses  dance 

A  Cakewalk  in  the  dim  Renascence  Court. 

Three  people  in  the  silent  reading-room 

Regard  us  darkly  as  we  enter:  three 

Come  in  with  us,  stare  vacantly  about, 

Look  from  a  window  and  withdraw  at  once. 

A  drama;  a  balloon;  a  Beauty  Show: — 

People  have  seen  them  doubtless;  but  none  of  those 

Deluded  myriads  walking  up  and  down 

The  north  nave  and  the  south  nave  anxiously — 

And  aimlessly,  so  silent  and  so  sad. 

The   day  wears;   twilight   ends;   the   night   comes 

down. 
A  ruddy  targelike  moon  in  a  purple  sky, 
And  the  crowd  waiting  on  the  fireworks.     Come: 
Enough  of  Mob  for  one  while.     This  way  out — 
Past  Linacre  and  Chatham,  the  second  Charles, 
Venus  and  Victory — and  Sir  William  Jones 
In  placid  contemplation  of  a  State! — 
Down  the  long  corridor  to  the  district  train. 


RAILWAY    STATIONS 

i 

LONDON     BRIDGE 

Much  tolerance  and  genial  strength  of  mind 
Unbiased,  witnesses  who  wish  to  find 
This  railway-station  possible  at  all 
Must  cheerfully  expend.     Artistical 
Ideas  wither  here :    a  magic  power 
Alone  can  pardon  and  in  pity  dower 
With  fictive  charm  a  structure  so  immane. 
How  then  may  fancy,  to  begin  with,  feign 
An  origin  for  such  a  roundabout 
Approach — so  intricate,  yet  so  without 
Intention,  and  so  spanned  by  tenebrous 
And    thundering   viaducts?      Grotesquely,    thus: 
One  night  the  disposition  of  the  ward 
Was  shifted;  for  the  streets  with  one  accord, 
Enfranchised  by  a  landslip,  danced  the  hay 
And  innocently  jumbled  up  the  way. 
And  so  we  enter.     Here,  without  perhaps, 
Except  the  automatic  money-traps, 
Inside  the  station,  everything  so  old, 
So  inconvenient,  of  such  manifold 
25 


26  RAILWAY   STATIONS 

Perplexity,  and,  as  a  mole  might  see, 

So  strictly  what  a  station  shouldn't  be, 

That  no  idea  minifies  its  crude 

And  yet  elaborate  ineptitude, 

But  some  such  fancied  cataclysmal  birth: — 

Out  of  the  nombles  of  the  martyred  earth 

This  old,  unhappy  terminus  was  hurled 

Back  from  a  day  of  small  things  when  the  world 

At  twenty  miles  an  hour  still  stood  aghast, 

And  thought  the  penny  post  mutation  vast 

As  change  itself.     Before  the  Atlantic  race 

Developed  turbined  speed;  before  life's  pace 

Was  set  by  automobilism ;  before 

The  furthest  stars  came  thundering  at  the  door 

To  claim  close  kindred  with  the  sons  of  men ; 

Before  the  lettered  keys  outsped  the  pen; 

Ere  poverty  was  deemed  the  only  crime 

Or  wireless  news  annihilated  time, 

Divulged  now  by  an  earthquake  in  the  night, 

This  ancient  terminus  first  saw  the  light. 

A  natural  magic  having  gravely  made 
This  desperate  station  possible,  delayed 
No  longer  by  its  character  uncouth, 
The  innocent  adventurer,  seeking  truth 
Imaginative,  if  it  may  be,  plays 
His  vision,  penetrant  as  chemic  rays, 


RAILWAY    STATIONS  27 

Upon  the  delta  wide  of  platforms,  whence 
Discharges   into   London's   sea,    immense 
And  turbulent,  a  brimming  human  flood, 
A  river  inexhaustible  of  blood 
That  turns  the  wheels,  and  by  a  secret,  old 
As  labour,  changes  heart-beats  into  gold 
For  those  that  toil  not :  all  the  gutters  run, 
Houses  are  daubed,  with  it;  and  moon  and  sun 
Splashed  as  they  spin.     And  yet  this  human  tide, 
As  callous  as  the  glaciers  that  glide 
A  foot  a  day,  but  as  a  torrent  swift, 
Sweeps  unobservant  save  of  time — for  thrift 
Or  dread  disposes  clockwards  every  glance — 
Right  through  a  station  which  a  seismic  dance 
Chimerical  alone  can  harmonize 
Even  in  imagination's  friendly  eyes. 

Clearly  a  brimming  tide  of  mind  as  well 
As  blood,  whose  ebb  and  flow  is  buy  and  sell, 
Engulfed  by  London's  storm  and  stress  of  trade 
Before  it  reached  the  civic  sea,  and  made 
Oblivious,  knowing  nought  terrestrial 
Except  that  time  is  money,  and  money  all. 

Or  when  a  portly  dealer,  well-to-do, 
Chances  to  see  it  as  he  passes  through, 
Or  boy  or  girl  not  yet  entirely  swamped 
In  ways  and  means  and  business  of  accompt, 


28  RAILWAY    STATIONS 

About  the  many-platformed  embouchure 
And  utterance  of  suburban  life  obscure 
A  liberal  oeillade  tosses,  with  a  note 
Chromatic,  crimson  van  and  crimson  coat, 
The  parcel-post,  and  many  a  crimson  shrine 
Of  merchandise  mechanical  combine 
To  reassure  them  as  a  point  of  war 
Inspires  the  soldier;  for  the  cannon's  roar, 
The  trumpet's  blast,  the  thunder  of  the  drum, 
Are  crimson  motives;  and  the  city's  hum, 
The  noise  of  battle,  and  a  ruddy  sky 
May  echo  in  the  selfsame  harmony. 

Save  when  the  glance  of  age  whose  brisk  affairs 

Look  up  on  'Change,  of  youth  untouched  by  care's 

Inhibitory  wand  that  palsies  thought, 

No  other  gracious  sign  appears,  nor  aught 

Distinctly  personal,  innate  or  earned, 

In  the  dull,  rapid  passage  of  concerned 

Expression  from  the  station  to  the  street, 

Until  a  dire  resemblance  of  defeat 

In  one  set  visage  hides  the  common  face: 

Such  a  premonstrant  shadow  of  disgrace, 

Such  grey  alarm,  such  sickening  for  despair 

Is  only  seen  in  urban  crowds,  for  there 

The  broken  broker  feels  himself  alone, 

Exempt  from  scrutiny,  even  of  his  own 


RAILWAY    STATIONS  29 

Protean  introspection,  and  as  free 

As  genius,  or  as  fallen  spirit,  to  be 

The  very  image  of  the  thing  he  is — 

A  figure  on  the  brink  of  the  abyss, 

The  failure  and  the  scapegoat  of  the  mart, 

The  loser  in  the  game,  the  tragic  part 

Wherein  some  novice  mastered  by  the  play 

Without   rehearsal   triumphs   every   day. 


n 

LIVERPOOL    STREET 

Through  crystal  roofs  the  sunlight  fell, 
And  pencilled  beams  the  gloss  renewed 
On  iron  rafters  balanced  well 
On  iron  struts;  though  dimly  hued, 
With  smoke  o'erlaid,  with  dust  endued, 
The  walls  and  beams  like  beryl  shone; 
And   dappled  light  the  platforms  strewed 
With  yellow  foliage  of  the  dawn 
That  withered  by  the  porch  of  day's  divan. 

The  fragrant,  suave,  autumnal  air 
A  dulcet  Indian  summer  breathed, 
Able  to  reach  the  inmost  lair 
Unclean  of  London's  interwreathed 
And  labyrinthine  railways,  sheathed 
In  annual  increments  of  soot: 
Memories  of  regions  parked  and  heathed, 
Of  orchards  lit  with  golden  fruit 
Attuned  October's  subterranean  lute. 

But  orchards  lit  with  golden  lamps, 
Or  purple  moor,   or  nutbrown  stream, 
30 


RAILWAY   STATIONS  31 

Or  mountains  where  the  morn  encamps 
Frequent  no  station-loafer's  dream: 
A  breed  of  folk  forlorn  that  seem 
The  heirs  of  disappointment,  cast 
By  fate  to  be  the  preacher's  theme, 
To  hunger  daily  and  to  fast, 
And  sink  to  helpless  indigence  at  last. 

From  early  morn  they  hang  about 
The  book-stall,  the  ref reshment-room ; 
They  pause  and  think,  as  if  in  doubt 
Which  train  to  go  by;  now  assume 
A  jaunty  air,  and  now  in  gloom 
They  take  the  platform  for  a  stage 
And  pace  it,  meditating  doom — 
Their  own,  the  world's;  in  baffled  rage 
Condemning  still  the  imperceptive  age. 

Like  aromatic  wine  that  does 
As  wine  will  do  with  living  clay, 
The  wonderful  anachronous, 
Autumnal-summertidal  day 
Seduced  a  laboured  soul  to  play 
The  idler: — (one  who  could  rehearse 
Unheard-of  things;  whose  thoughts  were  grey 
With  travail,  and  whose  reason  scarce 
Escaped  the  onslaught  of  the  universe: 


32  RAILWAY    STATIONS 

Yet  one  who  waged  an  equal  strife, 
And,  unsubdued,  beyond  the  sad 
Horizon  of  terrestrial  life 
In  noisome  cloud  and  thunder  clad, 
And  death-cries  of  the  past  that  bade 
Repent,  above  the  galaxy 
Enthroned  himself;  and,  sane  or  mad, 
Magnanimously  claimed  to  be 
The  soul  and  substance  of  eternity). 

He,  then,  to  whom  all  things  were  great 
By  virtue  of  his  native  power, 
Applauded  autumn's  sumptuous  state, 
And  meant  to  share  her  golden  hour — 
Her  kiss  that  moved  the  faded  flower 
To  blush  again,  the  haunting  time 
And  witchcraft  of  her  inmost  bower, 
Restoring  for  an  afternoon 
The  bosom  and  the  fragrant  skirts  of  June. 

He  booked  to  Epping  Street.    The  train 
Drew  out,  and  clanking  idly,  strayed 
Along  the  line  with  dull  refrain 
That  mocked  the  exigence  of  trade. 
At  Woodford  milkmen  long  delayed 
The  journey;  and  at  Snaresbrook  noise 
Broke  out,  and  passengers  inveighed 
Against  the  line:  such  bitter  joys 
Two-faced  occasion  brings.     At  Theydon  Bois. 


RAILWAY    STATIONS  33 

At  Chigwell  Lane  and  Lough  ton,  all 
Complacent   forest   hamlets,   folk, 
Since  chance  itself  might  not  forestall 
Their  sylvan  leisure,   tarrying,  spoke 
On  footboards  poised;  and  this  one's  joke, 
And  that  one's  parting  comment,  wound 
A  strand  of  laughter  through  the  smoke 
And  pulsing  steam,  whose  rhythmic  sound 
With  pliant  wheels  a  thundrous  music  ground. 

From  Epping  Street,  where  half  a  score 
Inviting  hostels  lie  between 
The  upper  forest  and  the  lower, 
The  bounds  and  metes  of  that  demesne 
That  once  from  Waltham  surged  in  green 
Luxuriance  to  the  northern  tide, 
The  lover  of  the  fall's  serene 
Miraculous  renascence  hied 
By  turnpike,  woodland  path  and  forest-ride. 

A  purple  haze  that  scarce  could  keep 
Diaphanous  consistence  spread 
Above  the  ridged  perspective  deep 
Of  Epping  Forest;  overhead, 
With  arabesque  of  shining  thread 
As  manifold  as  jewelled  dyes, 
In  varied  beauty  interwed 
A  snowy  vapour  damaskwise 
Endued  the  tenderest  of  turquoise  skies. 


3+  RAILWAY    STATIONS 

Ripples  of  cloud  like  silver  strands 
Escaloped  by  continual  surge, 
The  seaboard  of  fantastic  lands, 
Defined  the  welkin's  orient  verge: 
He  heard  afar  the  airy  dirge 
Of  breaking  billows,  saw  the  foam 
In  heaven  mantle,  spindrift  scourge 
The  zenith,  and  their  shadows  roam 
Across  the  woods  like  coveys  flying  home. 

A  herd  of  clouds  with  fleeces  rent 
Flocked  in  the  west;  an  aigret  plumed 
The  low-hung  northern  firmament; 
But  in  the  south  a  shadow  loomed 
Like  chaos  out  of  eld  exhumed 
To  re-engulf  the  world  long  lost 
In  time;  and  yet  the  darkness  bloomed 
With  sprays  of  bronze  like  briars  tossed, 
With  hidden  flower  and  fruit  of  flame  embossed. 

He  heard  the  woodman's  fateful  strokes 
In  Epping  Thicket,  blow  on  blow, 
Where  spaciously  the  loftiest  oaks 
In  all  the  forest  precincts  grow. 
The  rose,  the  bramble  and  the  sloe 
Muffled  the  holly,  hid  the  thorn ; 
And  berries  blushed  with  diverse  glow 
Of  gradual  colour  like  the  morn, 
Whose  changing  hues  the  ravished  east  adorn. 


RAILWAY   STATIONS  35 

In  many  a  dome  of  russet  green, 
Without  a  centre  shaft  to  draw 
The  branches  round  it,  might  be  seen, 
Once  more  with  tender-hearted  awe, 
The  burning  bush  religion  saw — 
The  nightshade's  coral  hanging  free, 
The  scarlet  hip,  the  crimson  haw, 
The  swarthy  bramble  lovingly 
Enwreathed  as  in  a  myriad-minded  tree. 

The  bramble  leaves,  with  iron  mould 
Distained,  like  metal  foliage  glanced; 
The  fluted  beech,  in  ruddy  gold 
Accoutred  bravely,  countenanced 
The  yellow  thorn,  whose  hue  enhanced 
In  turn  the  heather's  rusty  ore; 
The  bracken,  faded  all,  advanced 
Along   the   forest's   pillared   floor — 
A  tawny  tide  upon  an  emerald  shore. 

But  eager  frosts  that  braise  and  brand 
Autumnal  foliage  still  delayed; 
Green  was  the  forest,  green  the  land, 
A  fibrous  sward,  a  toothsome  blade: 
The  cow-bells  rang  in  every  glade 
Their  quaint  memorial  refrain, 
A  ghostly  sound  by  change  unlaid; 
The  year  stood  still;  and  summer  fain 
As  in  her  prime,  usurped  the  world  again. 


36  RAILWAY   STATIONS 

The  chrysosperm  in  sunbeams  pent 
A  largesse  squandered.     Rich  as  light 
Of  rainbow  brede,  the  forest-scent; 
And  subtler,  keener  than  the  white 
Aroma  of  the  stars  at  night 
That  maddens  lovers  wandering  late 
Betrothed  in  destiny's  despite; 
As  searching  as  the  importunate 
And  supersensuous  ether  uncreate. 

A  doe  stepped  forth  and  pried  about 
With  wondering  look  and  watchful  ear, 
Then  vanished.     Venturous  birds  burst  out, 
As  in  the  heyday  of  the  year, 
With  summer  song  in  snatches,  clear 
As  water  dropping  in  a  well; 
Harmonious  from  a  turret  near 
Replied  a  silvery  vesper-bell; 
The  braided  light  grew  golden;  evening  fell. 

In  Highbeach  Holt,  a  place  alone, 
A  wonder  of  the  world,  antique 
Protected  beeches  straightly  grown, 
Or  pollarded  of  yore  and  meek 
Transmuters  of  the  shapeless  freak 
The  iron  wrought  throughout  the  years 
To  symmetry,  that  all  things  seek 
Forever,  they,  the  verderer's 
Most  cherished  vert  in  all  his  marks  and  meres. 


RAILWAY    STATIONS  37 

Upon  a  forest  fabric  stood 
Three-piles  of  leaves  and  fruitful  mast, 
That  carpeted  the  upland  wood 
And  crypts  and  bowers,  obscure  and  vast 
In  the  close  twilight  waning  fast: 
Some  scumbled  moss,  with  here  and  there 
A  stroke  of  scanty  herbage,  cast 
A  chord  of  green,  remarked  and  rare 
Among  the  russet  spreading  everywhere. 

All  still  and  stately  ancient  trees, 
With  stem  erect  and  ample  bole, 
Maintained  their  native  majesties 
In  leafy  robe  and  verdant  stole 
Invested,  green  from  fork  to  poll; 
Old,  gnarled  and  thundersmitten,  some 
Uncouthly  grew,  the  sylvan  soul 
By  brutal  accident  became 
A  tortured  wraith  in  hideous  anguish  dumb. 

The  saplings  nourished  straight  and  tall 
Like  living  palisades  a-row, 
Their  lance-like  stems  in  vertical 
And  rhythmic  parallels  below; 
Above  like  crayon  lines  that  flow 
Obliquely  through  each  other,  swart 
Immingled  boughs  in  writhen  throe 
A  cross-hatched  canopy  athwart 
The  precinct  flung  and  roofed  and  arboured  court. 


38  RAILWAY    STATIONS 

A  silence  like  the  dead  of  night 
The  ebon-pillared  emerald  walls 
Immured;  a  dusky  latticed  light 
Fulfilled  the  high-groined  cloisters,  halls, 
Occult  recesses,  wildwood  stalls 
In  glimmering  chancel-aisles  arrayed; 
And  violet  beams  at  intervals 
Illumined  the  forest-girdled  glade 
Through  rents  and  loopholes  in  the  beechen  shade. 

With  hue  and  form  so  diverse  stored, 
Beauty  and  wonder,  vaulted  space 
By  fantasy  alone  explored, 
The  solitude  and  rich  embrace 
Soul-clasping  of  that  silent  place 
So  sphered  his  vision,  steeped  his  brain 
In  dreams,  that  he  beheld  no  trace 
Of  mundane  things,  nor  hint  nor  stain 
Of  twilight  or  of  night,  until  again 

He  reached  the  city.     Then  and  there 
A  potent  urban  spell  subdued 
The  forest's,  for  the  sorcerer 
Of  sorcerers  is  multitude. 
Three  railway-stations  closely  brood 
Together  by  the  Bishop's  Gate, 
That  ancient,  famous  neighbourhood; 
And  nowhere  more  profoundly,  late 
Or  early,  can  the  nameless  sense  of  fate 


RAILWAY   STATIONS  39 

In  numbers  immanent  be  felt 
Than  in  these  eastern  haunts  at  night, 
Where  eddying  tumults  surge  and  melt 
Like  clouds  beneath  remorseless  light 
In  streets  and  garnished  windows,  bright 
As  for  some  celebration  nigh, 
While  tides  of  transit  at  the  height 
In  rival  modes  of  passage  vie, 
And  wheel  and  hoof  and  automobile  ply. 

Barbaric  shouts  and  shrieks  he  heard, 
Like  cries  of  wrath  or  cries  of  ruth ; 
But  no  one  laughed  or  spoke  a  word; 
Master  and  man,  and  age  and  youth 
In  purposeless,   intense,   uncouth 
Commotion  seemed  for  ever  lost, 
Save  those  that  wooed  in  saddest  sooth 
A  hope  forlorn,  in  all  things  crossed, 
And  yet  resolved  to  live  at  any  cost. 

The  gutter-merchants.     At  the  kerb 
Fifty  and  five,  a  ghastly  row, 
With  faces  hell  could  not  perturb 
So  rigid  were  they  in  their  woe, 
Self-centred  stood.     Life's  undertow 
Had  dragged  them  down:     a  few  were  old, 
A  few  were  young,  though  fallen  so  low; 
But  most  were  in  their  prime:     they  sold 
Unnecessary  trifles  manifold. 


4o  RAILWAY    STATIONS 

A  while  he  watched  them  wonderstruck ; 
And  scornfully  they  watched  again. 
Not  these  the  undistinguished  ruck 
And  ordinary  run  of  men! 
Their  mystery  seemed  beyond  his  ken: 
What  brought  such  mortals  there,  so  strong, 
So  resolute?     How,  where  and  when 
Had  fortune  thrust  them  forth  among 
The  sufferers  unsalvable  of  wrong? 

Their  eyes  on  fire,  their  wrinkles  changed 
To  shadowed  sculpture  in  the  brute 
Effulgence  of  the  windows,  ranged 
Together  closely,  foot  by  foot, 
Like  giant  marionettes,  as  mute, 
As  quick  and  as  mechanical, 
Fronting  the  shops,  they  made  their  suit 
By  signs  alone;  and  each  and  all 
Unhuman  seemed,  austere,  asexual. 

And  yet  in  faces  drawn  and  starved 
The  tale  of  many  a  lingering  fight 
With  circumstance  was  deeply  carved; 
Of  hazardous  attempts  to  smite 
A  passage  through  the  solid  night 
The  outcast  beats  his  head  against; 
To  enter,  maugre  might  and  rights 
A  huckstering  world,  alike  incensed 
By  challengers  and  suppliants,  and  fenced 


RAILWAY    STATIONS  41 

About  with  adamantine  hearts. 
He  thought,  "  As  well  would  it  behove 
The  morning  to  invade  the  marts; 
Or  that  the  dawn  should  live  and  move 
Within  an  iceberg!     Nought  can  prove 
More  terrible  than  toil  for  hire, 
Or  toil  at  all,  to  these;  the  groove, 
The  settled  habit  men  desire — 
They  find  it  torture  and  the  nether  fire. 

"  On  every  lip,  on  every  brow 
I  see  their  dreadful  secret  lurk: 
All  work  to  them  is  thraldom  now; 
They  hate  to  work,  they  cannot  work. 
This  last  expedient  still  they  shirk, 
And  every  day  resolve  to  fly 
From  hell: — No  hope,  no  fear,  no  quirk 
Of  conscience,  in  the  public  eye 
Shall  stand  us  there  again  who  dare  to  die! 

**  But  all  have  made  it  up  with  fate 
Sincerely  by  the  evening!     Soon, 
Or  when  the  irksome  night  is  late 
And  in  the  west  the  wintry  moon 
Disdains  the  city,  or  at  noon 
When  the  huge  welter  of  the  day 
Goes  thundering  past  them  to  a  tune 
They  cannot  sing,  the  old  dismay 
Victorious  seems  and  death  the  only  way. 


42  RAILWAY    STATIONS 

"  Diurnally  recurrent  strife ! 
Some  carry  poison;  always  there 
The  silent  river  flows;  now  life, 
Now  death,  the  makeweight  of  despair 
Determines;  but  the  end  is  ne'er 
In  doubt: — In  utter  obloquy, 
In  utter  woe,  we  greatly  dare 
To  live,  since  those  alone  are  free 
Who  keep  the  power  to  be  or  not  to  be. 

"  Such  is  their  dread,  their  awful  lot — 
To  live  with  palsied  souls  and  numb 
Affections!     Higher  courage  not 
With  sound  of  prayer  or  sound  of  drum 
In  battle  or  in  martyrdom 
Was  ever  shown  by  saint  or  knight! 
They  stand  at  gaze  through  wearisome 
Eternities,  by  ruthless  light 
Betrayed  and  scorned  and  shuddered  at,  invite 

"  The  passers-by  to  spend  the  pence 
That  keeps  them  tortured  in  the  pit 
Wherein  their  supersubtle  sense 
Entrapped  them,  and  the  fire  their  wit 
Prepared,  their  pride  and  passion  lit! 
Only  the  miracle,  mankind, 
Can  face  this  hell  of  the  unfit — 
Only  the  universe  enshrined 
In  lordly  flesh  and  blood  and  lordly  mind." 


IN    THE    CITY 

Is  it  heaven  and  its  city-porch 
Or  a  ceiling  high-hung  of  old 
With  lacquer  fumed  and  scrolled 
Of  many  a  festal  torch? 

High  heaven  it  is,  and  the  day 
With  its  London  doom  of  smoke 
No  storm  can  quite  revoke, 
No  deluge  wash  away. 

When  their  march  and  song  grow  mute 
In  the  city's  labyrinth  trapped, 
The  storms  themselves  are  wrapped 
In  draggled  shrouds  of  soot. 

Whirlwinds  by  lightnings  paced 
To  run  their  wild  career, 
With  ragged  gossamere 
Of  fine-spun  carbon  laced. 

As  soon  as  they  quit  the  shires 
Are  lost  beyond  all  hail: 
The  mightiest  tempests  quail 
In  the  midst  of  a  million  fires. 
43 


44  IN   THE   CITY 

But  the  heavens  are  clear  to-day 
Though  their  London  doom  of  smoke, 
No  storm  can  quite  revoke, 
No  deluge  wash  away. 


CAIN 

My  sons  and  daughters;  children's  children;  Cain's 
Posterity: — God,  what  a  multitude 
From  one  man's  seed — hiding  the  sun! 
They  stop  the  air,  and  make  this  cave  a  tomb 
Already!     .     .     .     What?     I    bade   them?     If    I 

did, 
'Twas  not  to  stifle  me.     Stand  from  the  door! 
Let  in  the  light,  let  in  the  breath,  of  heaven! 

Now  I  remember  why  I  made  them  come. 
Carry  me  out  among  them.     All  the  air 
That  mantles  earth  invisibly,  and  fills 
The  bosom  of  the  world,  would  scarce  suffice 
To  word  with  power  the  thing  I  have  to  tell. 

My  sight  grows  keen  again:     I  see  them, — these 
The  offspring  of  my  loins: — Enoch  and  Irad, 
Sons  and  companions;  generations;  boys 
That  promise  to  be  great — Jabal  and  Jubal, 
And  my  namesake,  Tubalcain.     My  lusty  men, 
My  breeding  women  and  my  little  ones, 
My  maidens  beautiful,  my  young  men  chaste, 
My  blessing  and  God's  curse  be  with  you  all. 
45 


46  CAIN 

Lie  down  about  me,  stretched  at  length;  behind 
There,  sit  or  kneel;  and  let  the  standers  ring 
Us  closely  round,  that  every  one  may  hear. 

My  children,  I  am  dying.     Very  old 

Am  I.     A  thousand  storms  have  shaken  all 

My  members;  and  the  moments,  like  a  rain 

That  never  lessens,  falling  day  and  night 

Throughout  the  steadfast  centuries,  have  cleansed 

My  memory  of  the  chances  that  befell: — 

Our  sojourns  and  our  warfare  and  our  work, 

Our  triumphs,  travels,  happinesses,  pains, 

My  own  especial  charge  and  vigilance 

For  us  and  ours,  as  well  as  intimate 

Affection,  privy  thoughts  and  single  life, 

From  my  remembrance  like  a  landslip  fall, 

Leaving  the  naked  rock  of  that  event 

Whereon  our  fate  is  founded.     Many  times 

I  thought  to  tell  you,  many  times  put  off. 

It  may  be  said  when  I  have  made  it  known — 

Often  I  told  myself  so: — Had  he  kept 

His  secret  to  himself,  our  folk,  unswayed 

By  knowledge,  might  have  overborne  divine 

Intention,  and  the  tribal  fate  decreed. 

But  I  say,  No.     I  fought  God's  will,  and  built 

A  city  east  of  Eden.     Void  it  stands, — 

It,  and  the  city,  Enoch,  which  I  named 

After  my  eldest  born, — silent  and  void 


CAIN  47 

Except  for  beasts  and  birds: — you  would  not  live 

In  houses,  rooted,  impotent  as  trees. 

Why  had  God  loosed  you  from  the  cumbering  earth 

And  given  you  pliant  limbs  if  not  to  roam 

From  place  to  place?     Caves  in  the  wilderness, 

And  in  the  desert  camps  for  sons  of  mine! 

God  had  ordained  it;  deftly  given  us  limbs 

That  he  might  curse  us: — did  we  grow  like  trees 

Where  had  his  fugitives  and  wanderers  been? 

God  cannot  be  escaped:     He  means  that  I 

Should  tell  you.     Fables,  whispered  closely,  hum 

About  the  watchfires ;  and  a  lie  believed 

May  sow  a  tribal  fate  more  terrible 

Than  errantry  like  ours.     This  too,  I  know, 

My  children, — that  I  dare  not,  cannot,  die 

Until  I  tell  you: — and  I  wish  to  die, 

Being  forewearied  of  the  world  and  time. 

I  had  a  brother,  Abel,  whom  I  loved 

As  no  man  shall  be  loved  by  man  again. 

Companions  were  we  when  the  world  was  young, 

And  only  us  of  our  nativity 

To  love  the  other  for  the  other's  sake: 

Our  gentle  mates  were  second  in  our  hearts. 

Younger  than  I,  he  was  the  hardier; 

And  I  in  everything  gave  way,  well  pleased 

That  he  should  still  excel, — and  with  his  pride 

In  excellence  well  pleased.     Our  thoughts  of  God 


48  CAIN 

Alone  divided  us,  as  such  thoughts  will — 
Father  from  son,  kindred  from  kindred,  folk 
From  folk,  until  the  world  or  God  shall  cease. 

I  dug  and  planted;  studied  nature's  way; 

And  out  of  meagre  grasses  fostered  grain, 

Enhanced  the  zest,  augmented  and  refined 

The  substances  of  fruits  and  roots  and  herbs. 

My  brother  idled,  angry  in  the  sun 

And  sullen  in  the  shade.     At  times  he  gazed 

On  Eden  half  a  day  in  ecstacy; 

Or  dark  with  sin  hereditary,  wrath 

And  sorrow  intermingled,  frowned  on  heaven 

Until  he  fell  down  pulseless,  breathless,  dead 

It  seemed,  by  fighting  passions  hacked  and  slain. 

In  rarer  moods  he  wrought  with  me,  perturbed 

By  mystery  of  the  blossoms  that  unveiled 

Such  tender  beauty,  and  with  fragrance  bore 

The  seed  the  earth  enwombed:     it  maddened  him 

To  watch  how  nature  did,  to  know  the  thing 

Achieved  and  not  to  understand : — "  Shall  folk, 

The  human  fruit  of  blossoms  that  unite, 

Be  in  the  earth  enwombed  and  live  again  ?  " 

"  Not  as  the  plants  are  we,"  I  answered  still 

His  obdurate  demand.     "  Released  from  earth, 

Our  birth,  our  growth,  our  life  are  in  the  air, 

Though  when  we  die  the  soil  reclaims  us:     God 

Appointed  it.     But  in  our  seed  we  live 


CAIN  49 

As  blossoms  do :  " — an  all-atoning  truth 
That  only  tortured  him.     He  knew  no  ease 
In  life,  no  respite  found  from  doubt  and  dread 
Except  in  force  expended,  powers  employed. 
Loving  the  heats  and  dangers  of  the  chase, 
Deep-bosomed,  swift  of  foot,  he  overtook 
The  leopard  flying  for  life;  the  lion  feared 
To  meet  him;  from  their  bloody  dens  he  dragged 
The  fiercest  beasts  and  killed  them  weaponless. 

At  dawn  upon  an  altar  built  of  turf 
And  grafted  in  the  earth,  I  daily  spread 
For  God  a  grateful  table,  fruit  and  corn 
In  season.     But  my  brother  worshipped  not 
With  me: — "I  serve  the  Lord  by  killing  things," 
He  told  me  when  I  asked  him  how  he  praised 
The  maker  of  the  world.     "  God's  will  it  is," 
He  said,  "  that  all  his  creatures  should  destroy 
Each  other:     hoofed-and-horned  devour  the  herb 
Fattening    themselves    for    fanged-and-clawed ;    the 

night 
Devours  the  day;  the  day,  the  night;  I  kill 
All    things   that    are — beasts,    fishes,   birds,    grain, 

fruit ; 
Darkness  itself  with  fire  I  can  dismember. 
God's  will  is  light  and  darkness,  life  and  death : 
Two  utmost  joys,  to  kill  and  to  beget, 
I  share  with  God,  creator  and  destroyer." 


5o  CAIN 

"  But  God  is  love,"  I  said.    "  Seek  not  for  God 
In  bloodshed.     In  the  rapture  of  desire, 
In  busy  peace  of  heart  by  day,  in  dreams 
By  night  that  sweeten  sleep  with  paradise 
Discover  God." 

"  No ;  God  is  strength,"  he  said. 
"  Hunger  and  carnage,  lust  and  strife  are  God 
Inspiring  all  His  creatures,  strong  or  weak, 
In  their  divine  degree." 

"  Save  man !  "     I  cried, 
"  Although  with  skins  of  slaughtered  beasts  we  veil 
Our  nakedness,  against  the  weather  pitch 
Pavilions  in  the  desert,  we  devour 
No  flesh,  nor  stain  our  lips  with  blood;  the  earth's 
Benignant  bosom  feeds  us  tenderly." 

"  Like  sheep  and  kine — big-bellied  things,  the  prey 

Of  lean  ferocity!     Since  we  can  kill"     .     .     . 

He  looked  at  me  askance,  a  splintered  fire 

Burst  from  his  eyes  athwart  the  dawning  thought; 

Unwonted  laughter  shimmered  in  his  face, 

Like  heat  that  vibrates  from  the  sun-soaked  earth 

And  makes  a  presence  of  the  throbbing  air. 

"  Since  we  can  kill  ?  "     I  echoed,  knowing  well 
His  dreadful  meaning.     "  What  you  dare  not  speak 
You  will  not  do !  " 


CAIN  51 

"  The  thoughts  that  teem  with  deeds 
Fulfil  themselves  unspoken.     God  delights 
To  rend  and  tear,  to  lap  the  smoking  blood. 
God's  a  voracious  God;  the  uddered  things 
And  haunched,  the  sagging  entrails  are  his  prey 
Assigned ;  the  tiger  and  the  lion,  His  fangs, 
His  appetite  and  maw.     Were  we  to  dip 
Our  mouths  in  blood,  like  those  beloved  beasts, 
It  would  rejoice  the  hungry  heart  of  God. 
And  for  our  own  behoof, — if  flesh  of  fruit, 
The  blood  of  berries,  mellow  sap  of  pulse 
And  marrow  of  the  grain  can  nourish  strength 
Like  ours,  what  keener  zest,  what  ampler  might 
A  more  compact,  a  more  essential  fare 
Might  goad  our  palates  with  and  prime  our  nerves! 
The  loins  of  timid  things  that  chew  the  cud 
Mature  the  pasturage  we  cannot  eat 
For  our  superior  nurture.     I  shall  flesh 
My  appetite — God's  appetite  in  me." 

"  Not  God's!  "     I  cried  in  wrath.     "  The  God  of 

man 
Lions  and  tigers  in  his  similitude 
Would  never  frame." 

"  In  whose  resemblance,  then  ? 
Brother,  God  shaped  his  wanton,  ravening  beasts 
In  likeness  of  his  cruelty — the  mark, 


52  CAIN 

The  very  soul  and  character  of  God. 

So  sure  am  I  that  God  designed  His  men 

To  feed  on  flesh  and  blood  as  lions  do 

That  I  shall  challenge  it.     You  offer  God 

The  sweetness  and  the  ripeness  of  the  earth 

Upon  your  turfen  table,  and  salute 

The  dawn.     To-morrow  at  your  side 

I  shall  upon  an  altar  built  of  stone — 

The  monument  of  what  must  there  befall — 

A  living  victim  sacrifice,  while  both 

Entreat  a  sign  from  heaven,  nor  cease  to  pray 

Until  God's  will  and  pleasure  are  made  known. 

How  say  you  ?     Dare  you  put  God  to  the  test  ?  " 

"  In  His  great  name!  "  I  cried,  assured  that  now 
The  man  I  loved  would  know  the  heart  of  God, 
So  human,  so  divine — as  I  believed. 

Wet  with  the  vapour  that  involved  the  earth, 

A  sheaf  of  corn  across  my  shoulders  slung, 

With  apples  in  a  basket  in  my  right, 

And  in  my  other  hand  a  bunch  of  grapes, 

I  climbed  the  hill  before  the  dawn,  and  laid 

My  offering  on  my  altar,  sure  of  heaven. 

My  brother  followed,  leading  in  a  withe, 

A  white  bull,  whiter  than  the  rolling  fog 

That  wreathed  its  horns.    He  spoke  not ;  nor  did  I. 

But  when  the  touch  of  morning  lit  the  crests 


CAIN  53 

Of  Havilah  o'erhanging  Eden,  doubt 
Assailed  me  suddenly.     I  crushed  the  grapes 
In  eager  hands,  staining  the  golden  corn, 
The  ruddy  fruit — a  rite  then  first  observed 
Unwittingly,  for  all  my  being  shook 
With  abject  fear  of  God,  unknown  before, 
But  soon  about  to  overcast  the  world — 
Though  not  on  us  the  woeful  shadow  lies: 
Accursed  of  God  we  earnestly  disclaim 
The  cowardice  that  hallows  vengeful  wrath 
And  terror  of  the  inconceivable. 

It  was  in  ignorance  I  crushed  the  grapes, 
Inspired  by  God  against  my  conscious  will 
To  pour  out  blood  before  Him.     Yet  I  spoke 
My  prayer — our  prayer: — together  children,   pray 
Once  more  with  me — with  Cain  before  he  dies: — • 
"  O  God  of  men,  we  thank  Thee  for  the  earth, 
For  life  and  deathj  for  labour  and  for  rest, 
For  day  and  night,  for  seasons,  times  and  tides; 
Empower  our  souls  with  faith;  direct  our  steps 
In  ways  of  pleasantness  and  paths  of  peace; 
And  thine  shall  be  the  praise  for  ever  more, 
Creator  of  the  world,  the  just,  the  true, 
The  merciful,  the  gracious  God  of  men." 

I  made  my  invocation,  unaware 

How  insolent  it  was;  and  on  my  knees 


54  CAIN 

Implored  a  token  of  acceptance.     Through 
The  valley  rolled  the  mist;  a  pearly  smoke 
O'ercanopied  the  guarded  bowers,  and  depths 
Profound  of  sylvan  shadow,  that  the  day, 
Unveiling,  deepened;  sundered  mountain-tops, 
Pellucid  in  the  crimson  gorge  of  dawn, 
Above  the  earth  like  pendent  meteors  burned; 
The  Pishon  wound  among  the  woods  below, 
The  mirror  of  the  morning  streaming  blood, 
With  amber  and  with  beryl-stone  enchased. 
But  God  was  silent  and  allowed  no  sign. 
Then  as  the  sun  surmounted  Havilah, 
My  brother,  kneeling  strongly  on  the  bull's 
Ascendant  shoulder,  bore  the  creature  down: 
His  left  hand  gripped  its  under  jaw,  and  bent 
Its  tossing  head  backward  and  stretched  its  throat; 
His  right  implanted  in  its  curded  neck 
The  ivory  blade,  that  out  he  drew  again 
Ensanguined  all  its  length,  swiftly  and  smooth 
As  though  the  spouting  blood  had  thrust  it  forth. 
His  grip  upon  its  muzzle  choked  the  bull's 
Affrighted  roar,  his  puissance  overcame 
Its  agony,  and  held  it  till  it  died, 
Upon  the  dripping  altar  offered  up, 
Its  milkwhite  dewlap  and  its  milkwhite  flank 
With  bloody  foliage  strown  and  flowers  of  death. 

Mastering  his  bosom  as  a  rough-wrought  sea 


CAIN  55 

Recovers  tidal  measure  when  the  storm 
Desists,  my  brother  tarried,  vigilant 
To  repossess  himself;  then  stepping  slow 
With  majesty  and  grace  unseen  on  earth 
Before  that  morn  of  world-transforming  chance, 
He  left  the  altar,  and  flung  his  looks  aloft 
Where  sumptuously  the  vintage  of  the  east 
Empurpled  all  the  peaks  of  Havilah, 
And  westward  where  belated  orbs  of  night, 
So  limpid  was  the  heaven-spanned  firmament, 
Between  Assyrian  summits  darkling  swung 
Their  crystal  lamps.    The  beauty  of  the  world 
Rebuked  him  for  a  moment — or  I  thought 
It  did:     the  pause,  the  doubt,  if  doubt  or  pause 
Began,  was  seen  by  me,  not  felt  by  him, 
And  died  upon  its  birth. 

"Almighty  God," 
With  hardihood  devout  he  said,  "  accept 
This   blood   that  steams  new-spilt,   and   this,   Thy 

brute, 
New-slain  to  please  Thee;  and  bestow  a  sign 
Of  Thy  acceptance  that  Thy  men  may  know 
How  strenuous,  how  absolute  Thou  art, 
A  God  alive,  an  active  God,  a  God 
Delighting  in  a  bloody  sacrifice, 
As  Thy  ferocious  creatures  take  delight 
In  slaughter  and  the  flesh  of  rams  and  bulls." 


56  CAIN 

Forthwith  while  yet  the  coil  of  breath,  that  bore 

His  supplicative  arrogance,  aspired 

Unseen  in  the  unseen,  the  cloudless  top 

And  tented  blue  of  heaven,  disparting,  showed 

As  in  a  fruit  that  bursts,  the  sanguine  seed 

And  crimson  heart  of  glory,  lucid  shapes 

Celestial  and  pavilions  thronged  with  life, — 

A  transient  revelation,  but  beheld 

In  vision  still,  as  obvious  as  the  sun, 

By  my  surviving  eyes  that  wait  on  death. 

Heaven   opened    and    heaven    closed:     adown    the 

gulf 
Unmeasured  and  aerial  steep  of  space 
A  saffron  flame,  in  figure  like  a  frond 
The  wind  inwraps  and  tapers  skywards,  fell 
Directly  on  my  brother's  altar,  lapped 
The  hissing  blood  as  with  a  hundred  tongues, 
And,  fawning  o'er  the  carcase,  burnt  it  up. 
Transfigured  by  acceptance  of  the  blood 
He  spilt,  my  brother  laughed  aloud,  and  called 
Exultantly  on  God.     "  Divine  destroyer, 
Reveller  in  life  and  death,  let  me  partake 
With  Thee!  "  he  cried.     Dropping  the  ivory 

blade 
That  broached  the  creature's  life,  before  the  fire 
Had  licked  the  flesh  from  all  the  blackened  ribs, 
He  grasped  a  smouldering  handful  and  scorched  his 

mouth 


CAIN  57 

With  God's  accepted  sacrifice.     Appalled 

To  see  a  man,  my  brother,  taste  the  food 

Of  savage  brutes,  my  senses  failed,  my  heart 

Stood  still  a  space;  then  thundering  in  my  ears 

A  tide  of  passion  swept  me  from  myself, 

A  thousand  judgments  like  a  gathered  storm 

Burst  in  my  mind: — "  If  God,"   I  thought,   and 

seized 
My  brother's  blade,  "  delights  in  blood  of  beasts, 
The  blood  of  men  should  fill  the  cup  divine 
With  happiness  ineffable."     Straightway 
I  flung  an  arm  about  my  brother's  neck, 
And  drove  the  bloodstained  ivory  through  his  heart. 
He  fell  without  a  murmur:  the  breath  of  life 
Escaped  his  grinding  teeth,  his  parted  lips; 
The  wonder  in  his  eyes  dismays  me  still, — 
And  overwhelmed  then.     But  when  I  looked 
To  see  the  vaulted  base  of  paradise 
Re-open,  and  a  sheaf  of  fire  descend, 
No  fissure,  chink  or  crevice,  broke  the  blue 
Immensity  that  hid  the  infinite. 

Thus  God  refused  my  brother's  blood — the  man 
I  loved,  and  killed  that  he  might  live  divine 
Eternally,  a  part  of  God;  for  that, 
Within  the  madness  of  the  murder,  sang 
Like  music  in  a  tempest.     God  preferred 
A  bull's  blood  to  my  brother's: — still  I  think, 


58  CAIN 

Old,  dying  as  I  am,  something  went  wrong 

In  heaven.     Howbeit  when  I  saw  him  dead 

And  unaccepted,  not  the  saltest  tear 

Assuaged  the  fiery  horror  of  myself 

That  melted  all  my  strength:     in  thunder  drops 

The  sweat  splashed  from  my  brow;  a  core  of  pain 

Without  remission  rising  in  my  gorge, 

Hot,  hard  and  noisome  sickened  me;  I  beat 

My  breast;  I  fell;  I  rose;  I  fled,  and  plunged 

In  wooded  darkness  where  the  thicket  wove 

A  thorny  canopy.     My  fate,  my  doom! — 

God  had  me  there  alone,  unhelped  by  light, 

By  power  and  beauty  of  the  widespread  world. 

Immediately  the  still  and  awful  voice, 

Whose  accents  are  omnipotence,  besieged 

My  soul  and  said,  "  Thy  brother,  where  is  he?  " 

I  answered,  as  men  answer  God,  at  once, 

"  I  know  not,  I.     Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?" 

"What    hast    thou    done?"    God    said.      "Thy 

brother's  blood, 
That  crieth    from    the    ground,    hath   cursed   the 

ground 
For  thee.     When  thou  shalt  till  the  ground  that 

oped 
Her  mouth  to  drink  thy  brother's  blood,  poured  by 

thy  hand, 
Henceforth  it  shall  not  yield  thee  of  her  strength. 


CAIN  59 

A  fugitive  and  a  wanderer  shalt  thou  be 
Upon  the  earth !  " 

I  answered  in  the  rapt 
Despair  the  presence  and  the  ire  of  God 
Begat,  "  I  know  that  my  iniquity 
Can  never  be  forgiven.     Behold,  since  Thou 
Hast  reft  from  me  the  favour  of  the  ground 
And  turned  Thy  countenance  away,  and  I 
Shall  be  a  wanderer,  it  shall  come  to  pass 
That  whosoever  findeth  me  shall  slay  me." 

"  Therefore,"  said  God,  "  whoever  slayeth  Cain 
On  him  a  sevenfold  vengeance  shall  be  taken." 
With  that  God  set  His  mark  upon  my  brow, 
Which  none  behold  unawed  or  look  on  twice. 

I  have  told  the  truth;  no  more  remains  to  tell: 
God's  curse  is  on  us;  and  we  make  it  do. 
Our  errant  life  is  not  unhappy;  fear, 
That  harrows  others,  is  to  us  unknown, 
Being  close  to  God  by  reason  of  His  curse. 
Sometimes  I  think  that  God  Himself  is  cursed, 
For  all  His  things  go  wrong.     We  cannot  guess; 
He  is  very  God  of  God,  not  God  of  men: 
We  feel  His  power,  His  inhumanity; 
Yet,  being  men,  we  fain  would  think  Him  good. 
Since  in  imagination  we  conceive 


60  CAIN 

A  merciful,  a  gracious  God  of  men, 
It  may  be  that  our  prayer  and  innocent  life 
Will  shame  Him  into  goodness  in  the  end. 
Meantime  His  vengeance  is  upon  us;  so, 
My  blessing  and  God's  curse  be  with  you  all. 


ECLOGUES 

THE  FEAST  OF  ST.  HILARY 

Bertram.     Lionel.     Sandy.     Cyril.     Vivian. 

Bertram 
Your  evolution,  still  so  crude 

In  civic  life,  prefers  to  sit 
In  murky  air  of  muslin  stewed 

With  soot  and  sulphur  of  the  pit. 

Lionel 
Why,  this  is  only  London's  own 

Appurtenance  in  Janiveer 
And  winter  months — a  want  of  tone, 

A  jaundice  of  the  atmosphere. 

Vivian 
And  every  winter  cheerful  folk, 

Six  millions  powerless  to  escape, 
Upon  this  clammy  muslin  choke 

This  filthy  air  of  sodden  crape. 

Bertram 
Expecting  no  imperial  cure 

From  any  corporate  King  Log 
61 


6i  ECLOGUES 

They  undergo  it,  forte  et  dure, 

The  torture  of  the  London  fog. 

And  though  habitual  croakers  croak, 

A  metaphysical  desire 
Not  to  consume  our  proper  smoke, 

Save  when  the  chimney  goes  on  fire, 

Through  urban  and  suburban  deeps 
Sub-conscious  in  the  minds  of  all, 

Explains  the  tolerance  that  keeps 
Our  fog  a  hardy  annual. 

Lionel 
I  love  the  fog:     in  every  street 

Shrill  muffled  cries  and  shapes  forlorn, 
The  frosted  hoof  with  stealthy  beat, 

The  hollow  sounding  motor-horn: 

A  fog  that  lasts  till,  gently  wrung 
By  Pythian  pangs,  we  realise 

That  Doomsday  somewhere  dawns  among 
The  systems  and  the  galaxies. 

And  ruin  at  the  swiftest  rate 

The  chartered  destinies  pursue; 

While  as  for  us,  our  final  fate 
Already  fixed  with  small  ado, 


ECLOGUES  63 

Spills  on  our  heads  no  wrathful  cup, 
Nor  wrecks  us  on  a  fiery  shore, 

But  leaves  us  simply  swallowed  up 
In  London  fog  for  evermore. 

Cyril 
The  admirable  errantry 

Of  London's  climate  who  can  sing? 
From  fogs  of  filthy  muslin  free, 

Elastic  as  a  morn  of  Spring. 

The  weather,  like  a  dazzling  bride, 
Undid  the  lonely  winter,  threw 
The  casemate  of  the  orient  wide 

And  made  the  enchanted  world  anew. 

But  yesterday,  so  quick  and  so 

Chromatic  is  the  climate  here — 

From  russet  mud  to  silver  snow, 

From  radiant  suns  to  fogs  austere. 

Lionel 
I  watched  the  morning  yesterday 

Where  from  the  ample  stair  you  look 
Across  the  Park  beneath  the  grey 

Ungainly  column  of  the  Duke: 

You  see  him  like  a  stylite  true 

Impaled  upon  his  pillar  stand: — 


64  ECLOGUES 

It  seems  to  pierce  him  through  and  through, 
The  rod  that  braves  the  levin-brand. 

Sunlit  the  other  column  glowed 

Intensely,  lifting  to  the  skies 
The  admiral  who  swept  the  road 

Of  empire  clear  for  centuries. 

Entangled  on  the  Surrey-side 

The  eager  day  a  moment  hung, 

Then  struck  in  hate  his  ardent  stride 

And  round  the  southern  chimneys  swung. 

A  silvery  weft  of  finest  lawn, 

So  thin,  so  phantom-like,  became 

Ethereal  mystery  scarcely  drawn 

Athwart  the  morning's  saffron  flame. 

The  Palace  and  the  Abbey  lost 

Their  character  of  masonry, 
Transformed  to  glittering  shadows  tossed 

And  buoyant  on  a  magic  sea. 

And  park  and  lake  and  precincts  old 
Of  Westminster  were  all  arrayed 

In  spectral  weeds  of  pearl  and  gold 
And  airy  drifts  of  amber  braid. 


ECLOGUES  6$ 

Bertram 
Ghastly  and  foul,  as  Hecate's  ban 

Pernicious  are  our  fogs;  but  sweet 
And  wonderful  the  mists  that  can 

Imparadise  a  London  street. 

The  fabrics  winnowed  sunbeams  work 

Of  urban  dew  and  smoky  air; 
The  opalescences  that  lurk 

In  many  a  court  and  sombre  square. 

The  tissued  dawn  that  gems  encrust, 

The  violet  wreaths  of  noon,  the  haze 

Of  emerald  and  topaz  dust 

That  shrouds  the  evening  distances; 

And  gloom  in  baths  of  light  annealed.     .     .     . 

ENTER  SANDY 

Lhnel 
From  top  to  toe  one  travel-stain 
You  come?    And  whence? 

Sandy 
An  outland  weald 
I  come  from,  and  a  dateless  reign 
That  modes  and  periods  never  touch. 

Bertram 
From  Epping  Forest,  I'll  be  sworn, 
The  wilderness  you  haunt  so  much! 


66  ECLOGUES 

Sandy 

No;  from  a  less  familiar  bourne: 
A  Sussex  chace  renowned  of  old 

Where  withering  innovation  halts; 
A  tract  of  mingled  wood  and  wold, 

Of  ragged  heaths  and  ferny  vaults. 

Lionel 
St.  Leonard's  Forest  by  your  shoes 

Over  the  latchet  daubed  with  earth! 
I  know  it  well:  the  Mole,  the  Ouse, 

Arun  and  Adur  have  their  birth 

Among  its  silting  springs;  and  there 
The  nightingale  has  never  sung, 

They  say,  so  humid  is  the  air, 

So  dank  the  woods  with  ivy  hung. 

In  summer-time  you  lightly  tread 
On  moss  as  green  as  emerald, 

And  soft  as  silken  velvet  spread 

Along  the  forest  chancel,  stalled 

With  bowers  of  thorn  and  laurel-tree; 

And  roomier  and  loftier 
Than  forest  aisles  are  wont  to  be, 

The  green  groined  roof  of  beach  and  fir 


ECLOGUES  67 

Admits  a  dulcet  twilight  filled 

With  golden  motes  and  beryl  hues, 

That  through  the  darkling  thickets  gild 
Arun  and  Adur,  Mole  and  Ouse. 

Sandy 
When  I  went  out  from  Horsham  town 

A  Northern  blast  of  winter's  breath 
Blew  low  across  the  open  down 

As  hard  as  hate,  as  cold  as  death. 

Close  to  the  land  the  firmament 

Like  a  camp-ceiling  clung;  and  nigh 

The  eaves  of  the  horizon,  bent 

Like  frowning  brows,  the  ashen  sky 

Through  ruined  loop-holes  scattered  wide 
A  pallid  gleam;  but  as  the  path, 

Leaving  the  highway  leapt  aside 

To  gain  the  forest,  winter's  wrath, 

By  sheltering  hedgerows  doubly  balked, 

Became  a  legendary  thing, 
And  for  a  while  beside  me  walked 

The  very  presence  of  the  spring. 

A  bridge  that  spans  a  pebbled  burn 
The  threshold  of  the  forest  is; 

And  there  like  some  daedalian  urn, 
Or  sangreal  of  fragrances. 


6S  ECLOGUES 

A  deeply  sunk,  a  vaulted  dell 

Possessed  the  summer's  inmost  soul — 
A  captive,  like  the  roseal  smell 

That  haunts  a  seeming-empty  bowl. 

Though  all  the  roses,  plucked  and  rent, 

Are  squandered,  yet  our  essence  knows 

And  greets  the  pure  material  scent, 
Which  is  the  spirit  of  the  rose. 

Within  the  forest-chancel,  stalled 

With  bowers  of  evergreen  and  laid 

With  lustrous  living  emerald, 

As  rich  a  moss  as  spring  displayed, 

No  green  groined  roof  of  fir  and  beach 
Reflected  bronze  and  beryl  hues, 

That  could  through  darkling  thickets  reach 
Arun  and  Adur,  Mole  and  Ouse. 

Unthatched,  instead  of  summer's  leaves, 
A  roof,  with  ebon  rafters  bare, 

Allowed  the  light  in  frosted  sheaves 
To  silver  all  the  wintry  air. 

With  clapping  wings  doves  wheeled  about 
Between  the  pine-tops  and  the  skies; 

And  blackbirds  flitted  in  and  out 

The  underwood  with  guttural  cries. 


ECLOGUES  69 

A  throstle  had  begun  to  build 

Though  still  untimed;  but  loud  and  long 
The  eager  storm-cock  sang  and  filled 

The  forest  with  his  splendid  song; 

While  spring,  in  winter's  bosom  warm, 

Prologued  in  bough  and  bole  and  root 

The  pregnant  trance  of  trees  that  form 

The  summer's  foliage,  flower  and  fruit. 

Bertram 
Harvest  in  Winter's  bosom  sleeps, 
While  time  his  patient  vigil  keeps. 


II 

st.  valentine's  day 
Ernest.     Julian. 

Julian 

Virginia  lives  in  a  square ; 

I  harbour  at  hand  in  a  street: 
And  Spring  has  begun  over  there; 

So  love  like  a  pestilence  sweet 
Envenoms  the  neighbouring  air. 

Ernest 

No  pestilence,  Julian!     Greet 
The  coming  of  Spring  with  delight. 

Have  done  with  your  modish  display! 
The  cynic's  intelligent  spite 

Arrives  by  the  miriest  way: 
The  ferment  that  works  in  the  night 

Of  a  prodigal,  desolate  day, 
A  morbid,  acidulent  scorn, 

Inhabits  the  vinegared  lees 
In  bosoms  condignly  forlorn — 
70 


ECLOGUES  71 

Julian 
In  bosoms  philosophy  frees 
From  the  burden  to  which  we  are  born! 

Ernest 

In  bosoms  that  nothing  can  please, 
Being  empty  of  pleasure  and  sunk 

In  themselves;  being  wizened  and  frail 
Like  vats  when  the  wine  has  been  drunk — 

Being  warped  and  unspeakably  stale 
Like  vats  in  desuetude  shrunk. 

Let  the  season  and  nature  prevail; 
Let  the  winepress  of  youth  over- run; — 

Julian 

If  the  valves  be  corroded  with  rust, 
And  the  power  and  gearing  undone! 

Ernest 

Empurpled  with  stains  of  the  must 
My  fancy,  forestalling  the  sun — 

Julian 
In  the  city  we  take  him  on  trust! 


72  ECLOGUES 

Ernest 

Disheartened  the  fog  with  a  glance, 
And   tinctured  with  opulent  dyes 

Of  the  lily,  the  rose  and  the  paunce 

The  sombre,  the  tenebrous  skies — 

With  the  tricoloured  blazon  of  France, 
And  the  light  of  a  paramour's  eyes! 

For  this  is  St.  Valentine's  day, 

And  my  sweetheart  came  into  the  lane: 
As  I  went  by  the  speediest  way, 

Being  late  for  the  morning  train, 
Diana,  in  sweet  disarray, 

The  wonder  of  women,  was  fain 
To  see  and  be  seen  of  me  first! 

Julian 

How  happy  to  love  and  be  loved ! 
How  wretched  is  he,  how  accursed, 
Whom  Destiny  handles  ungloved! 

Ernest 

The  highest  encounter  the  worst; 

For  they  must  be  sifted  and  proved, 
While  the  rabble  are  shaken  with  ease 

Through  a  wide-meshed  riddle  of  Fate. 


ECLOGUES  73 

Julian 
O  spare  your  proverbial  pleas 

And  the  wisdom  that  wiseacres  prate! 

Ernest 
You  said  that  philosophy  frees — 

Julian 

From  a  passion  I  would  not  abate 
For  the  wealth  of  the  world  all  told? 

From  the  exquisite  alchemy  pain, 
That  tortures  the  dross  into  gold? 

I  spoke  in  a  negligent  vein, 
For  I  love  like  the  lovers  of  old, 

Adoring  a  woman's  disdain, 
That  crushes  the  doughtiest  hope. 

Ernest 

You  speak  like  a  vassal  of  words, 
The  indolent  slave  of  a  trope! 

Exalt  your  irresolute  thirds 
Into  fifths  and  their  jubilant  scope; 

And  learn  of  St.  Valentine's  birds 
That  love  is  the  herald  of  joy. 

Julian 
The  pursuivant  rather  of  care! 


74  ECLOGUES 

Ernest 
You  must  brood  on  her  beauty  and  cloy 

Your  fancy,  extinguish  despair 
With  obdurate  visions;  destroy 

Yourself  in  her  excellence  rare; 
Be  buried  in  dreams  of  her  worth! 

Julian 

My  heart  with  her  excellence  bleeds; 
My  dreams  of  her  people  the  earth. 

And  the  curse  is,  there's  nothing  she  needs; 
She  is  rich  and  a  woman  of  birth, 

While  I  am  the  son  of  my  deeds. 

Ernest 
Achieve  then  a  sire  of  renown; 

Perform  to  the  height  and  be  great. 
You  have  fought 

Julian 
And  defeat  was  my  crown! 
When,  naked,  I  wrestled  with  Fate, 
The  Destinies  trampled  me  down: — 

I  fought  in  the  van  and  was  great, 
And  I  won,  though  I  wore  no  crown, 

In  the  lists  of  the  world;  for  Fate 
And  the  Destinies  trampled  me  down — 
The  myrmidons  trampled  me  down. 


SNOW 

i 
"  Who  affirms  that  crystals  are  alive  ?  " 

I  affirm  it,  let  who  will  deny: — 
Crystals  are  engendered,  wax  and  thrive, 

Wane  and  wither;  I  have  seen  them  die. 

Trust  me,  masters,  crystals  have  their  day, 
Eager  to  attain  the  perfect  norm, 

Lit  with  purpose,  potent  to  display 

Facet,  angle,  colour,  beauty,  form. 

u 

Water-crystals  need  for  flower  and  root 
Sixty  clear  degrees,  no  less,  no  more; 

Snow,  so  fickle,  still  in  this  acute 

Angle  thinks,  and  learns  no  other  lore. 

Such  its  life,  and  such  its  pleasure  is, 

Such  its  art  and  traffic,  such  its  gain, 

Evermore  in  new  conjunctions  this 
Admirable  angle  to  maintain. 
75 


76  SNOW 

Crystal  craft  in  every  flower  and  flake 
Snow  exhibits,  of  the  welkin  free: 

Crystalline  are  crystals  for  the  sake, 
All  and  singular,  of  crystalry. 

Yet  does  every  crystal  of  the  snow 

Individualise,  a  seedling  sown 
Broadcast,  but  instinct  with  power  to  grow 

Beautiful  in  beauty  of  its  own. 

Every  flake  with  all  its  prongs  and  dints 
Burns  ecstatic  as  a  new-lit  star: 

Men  are  not  more  diverse,  finger-prints 
More  dissimilar  than  snow-flakes  are. 

Worlds  of  men  and  snow  endure,  increase, 
Woven  of  power  and  passion  to  defy 

Time  and  travail:     only  races  cease, 
Individual   men   and   crystals   die. 

in 

Jewelled  shapes  of  snow  whose  feathery  showers, 
Fallen  or  falling  wither  at  a  breath, 

All  afraid  are  they,  and  loth  as  flowers, 

Beasts  and  men  to  tread  the  way  to  death. 

Once  I  saw  upon  an  object-glass, 

Martyred  underneath  a  microscope, 

One  elaborate  snow-flake  slowly  pass, 

Dying  hard,  beyond  the  reach  of  hope. 


SNOW  77 

Still  from  shape  to  shape  the  crystal  changed, 

Writhing  in  its  agony;  and  still, 
Less  and  less  elaborate,  arranged 

Potently  the  angle  of  its  will. 

Tortured  to  a  simple  final  form, 

Angles  six  and  six  divergent  beams, 

Lo,  in  death  it  touched  the  perfect  norm, 
Verifying  all  its  crystal  dreams! 

rv 

Such  the  noble  tragedy  of  one 

Martyred  snow-flake.     Who  can  tell  the  fate 
Heinous  and  uncouth  of  showers  undone, 

Fallen  in  cities! — Showers  that  expiate 

Errant  lives  from  polar  worlds  adrift 

Where  the  great  millennial  snows  abide; 

Castaways  from  mountain-chains  that  lift 
Snowy  summits  in  perennial  pride; 

Nomad  snows,  or  snows  in  evil  day 
Born  to  urban  ruin,  to  be  tossed, 

Trampled,  shovelled,  ploughed  and  swept  away 
Down  the  seething  sewers:  all  the  frost 

Flowers  of  heaven  melted  up  with  lees, 

Offal,  recrement,  but  every  flake 
Showing  to  the  last  in  fixed  degrees 

Perfect  crystals  for  the  crystal's  sake. 


78  SNOW 

V 

Usefulness  of  snow  is  but  a  chance 

Here  in  temperate  climes  with  winter  sent, 

Sheltering  earth's  prolonged  hibernal  trance: 
All  utility  is  accident. 

Sixty  clear  degrees  the  joyful  snow, 

Practising  economy  of  means, 
Fashions  endless  beauty  in,  and  so 

Glorifies  the  universe  with  scenes 

Arctic  and  antarctic:     stainless  shrouds, 
Ermine  woven  in  silvery  frost,  attire 

Peaks  in  every  land  among  the  clouds 

Crowned  with  snows  to  catch  the  morning's 
fire. 


THE  TESTAMENT  OF  SIR  SIMON  SIM- 
PLEX   CONCERNING    AUTOMO- 
BILISM 

That  railways  are  inadequate  appears 

Indubitable  now.     For  sixty  years 

Their  comfort  grew  until  the  train  de  luxe 

Arrived,  arousing  in  conducted  Cook's, 

And  other  wholesale  tourists,  an  envious  smart, 

For  here  they  recognised  the  perfect  art 

And  science  of  land-travel.     Now  we  sing 

A  greater  era,  hail  a  happier  Spring. 

The  motor-car  reveals  ineptitude 

In  railway-trains;  and  travellers  conclude 

The  railway  is  archaic:     strictly  true, 

Although  the  reason  sounds  as  false  as  new: — 

Railways  are  democratic,  vulgar,  laic; 

And  who  can  doubt  Democracy's  archaic? 

The  railway  was  the  herald  and  the  sign, 
And  powerful  agent  in  the  swift  decline 
Of  Europe  and  the  West.     The  future  sage 
Will  blame  sententiously  the  railway  age, 
Preachers  upon  its  obvious  vices  pounce, 
And  poets,  wits  and  journalists  pronounce 
79 


80  TESTAMENT    OF    SIR    SIMPLEX 

The  nineteenth  century  in  prose  and  rhyme 

The  most  unhappy  period  of  time. 

That  nations  towering  once  in  pomp  and  pride 

Of  monarchs,  rank  and  breeding,  should  subside 

To  one  dead  undistinguishable  horde 

Sans  sceptre,  mitre,  coronet  and  sword, 

Reverting  to  a  pithecoidal  state 

May  be  the  purpose  of  recurrent  fate; 

But  that  such  folks  should  to  themselves  appear 

Progressing  toward  a  great  millennial  year 

Is  just  the  bitter-sweet,  the  chilly-hot, 

The  subtle  metaphysic  of  the  plot. 

The  last  age  saw  the  last  stage  of  the  fit 
That  pestered,  when  the  Roman  Empire  split, 
The   catalytic  centuries:     the   strange 
Insanity  that  fed  on  secular  change; 
The  general  paralysis  of  men 
That  ended  in  the  railway  and  the  wen 
Called  London:  from  the  Tiber  to  the  Thames, 
From  dreaming  empire  to  delirious  aims 
That  move  the  laughter  of  the  careless  fates 
And  effervesce  in  socialistic  pates. 

But  convalescence  with  the  car  begins 
And  petrol  expiates  our  railway  sins. 
Before  we  know  we  shall  with  joy  behold 
A  world  as  sane  as  any  world  of  old; 


TESTAMENT   OF   SIR   SIMPLEX  81 

From  labour  and  electoral  problems  free, 
A  world  the  fibre  of  whose  health  shall  be, 
No  Will  to  be  the  Mob,  but  mastering  all, 
A  Will  to  be  the  Individual; 
For  every  Mob  exhales  a  poisonous  breath, 
And  Socialism  is  decadence,  is  deatk: 
The  Mob  expropriates,  degrades,  destroys; 
The  Individual  conquers,  makes,  enjoys. 
Not  till  the  motor  was  the  contrast  plain, 
Because  the  separate  classes  of  the  train 
Deceived  us  with  a  choice  of  company; 
And,  when  he  liked,  the  tame  celebrity, 
The  genius,  man  of  wealth,  aristocrat, 
By  means  of  tips  through  any  journey  sat 
In  cornered  state;  or,  with  sufficient  pelf, 
Could  purchase  a  compartment  for  himself. 
He  rather  would  have  deemed  himself  a  snob 
Than  that  the  train  could  turn  him  into  Mob, 
Till  automotion's  privacy  and  pride 
Exposed  the  grossness  of  the  railway  ride; 
For  'twas  the  freedom  of  the  motor-car 
That  showed  how  tyrannous  the  railways  are. 

To  go  by  train  from  one  place  to  another 

You  have  to  brave  the  station's  smoke  and  smother: 

The  train  derides  you  there;  'twill  never  come 

To  pick  you  up,  nor  turn,  to  see  you  home, 

A  single  wheel :     the  getting  under  way, 


82  TESTAMENT    OF    SIR    SIMPLEX 

The  true  vexation  of  a  holiday, 

The  stolid  train  permits  you  to  deplore; 

But  with  your  automobile  at  the  door — 

Why,  there  you  are,  nor  need  you  stir  a  foot, 

Man  and  portmanteau  instantly  en  route! 

You  buy  a  ticket  if  you  go  by  train 

At  some  offensive  loophole,  which  you  gain 

After  prolonged  attendance  in  a  queue — 

Whatever  class  you  take,  a  motley  crew: 

And  to  await  one's  turn,  like  patient  Job, 

Unites  one  with  a  vengeance  to  the  Mob. 

Then  you  may  miss  the  train;  but  you  must  wait 

Its  advent  and  departure  prompt  or  late. 

The  motor  soothes,  the  railway  racks  your  nerves; 

The  train  commands,  the  automobile  serves. 

The  automobile  nurses  all  caprice, 

And  gives  the  longest  life  a  second  lease; 

Indulges  indolence,  and  even  in  me 

Increases  individuality. 

I  thought,  and  many  my  opinion  shared, 
That  the  deceased  politic  who  declared 
That  all  were  Socialists,  had  told,  perhaps, 
A  fib  exploited  in  a  studied  lapse 
Of  platform  declamation  as  a  sop 
To  catch  erratic  voters  on  the  hop, 
The  strained  politeness  of  a  caustic  mind, 
A  dead-lift  effort  to  say  something  kind. 


TESTAMENT   OF    SIR    SIMPLEX  83 

'Twas  more  than  that:  not  only  had  we  learned 
To  suffer  Socialism;  our  souls  discerned 
A  something  fine  about  it;  egoists  even 
Perceived  therein  at  last  a  mundane  heaven. 

"  Life  is  a  railway  journey,"  genius  thought — 
(The  erring  genius  very  cheaply  bought 
With  gilded  apples  of  Asphaltites)  — 
"  Thieves  bearing  swag,  and  poets  sprouting  bays, 
The  ring,  the  cabinet,  scortatory  dames, 
Bishops,  sectarians  of  a  myriad  names, 
Bankers  and  brokers,  merchants,  mendicants, 
Booked  in  the  same  train  like  a  swarm  of  ants; 
First,  second,  third  class,  mass  and  mob  expressed 
Together  to  the  Islands  of  the  Blest — 
Each  passenger  provided  with  a  groat 
To  pass  the  Stygian  stile  for  Charon's  boat. 
Or  broad  or  narrow  as  the  gauge  may  run, 
None  leaves  the  track  without  disaster;  none 
Escapes  a  single  stoppage  on  the  way; 
And  none  arrives  before  his  neighbour  may. 
In  the  guard's  van  my  sacred  luggage  knocks 
Against  the  tourist's  traps,  the  bagman's  box; 
And  people  with  inferior  aims  to  mine 
Partake  the  rapid  transit  of  the  line. 
But  this  is  culture  of  the  social  school, 
And  teaches  me  to  lead  my  life  by  rule 
Empirical,  of  positive  descent 


84  TESTAMENT   OF   SIR    SIMPLEX 

And  altruistic  self-embezzlement. 

Life  is  a  railway  journey:  I  rejoice 

That  folk  whose  purpose,  visage,  clothes  and  voice 

Offend  me  will  continue  to  offend 

In  the  same  train  until  the  journey's  end." 

So  spoke  the  genius  in  pathetic  rage. 

The  socialistic  and  the  railway  age 

Were  certainly  coeval;  machinery  too 

Equated  communism;  and  every  new 

Development  of  electricity 

Was  welcomed  by  the  Mob  with  three  times  three, 

Convinced  the  world  at  last  was  through  the  wood — 

Right  through  to  Universal  Brotherhood! 

Conceive  it: — Universal  Brotherhood, 

With  everybody  feeble,  kind  and  good! 

I,  even  I,  Sir  Simon  Simplex,  know 

The  world  would  end  to-day  if  that  were  so. 

What  spur  does  man  require,  what  stinging  zest 

To  do  still  better  than  his  level  best? 

Why,  enemies;  and  if  he  has  them  not 

He  must  unearth  and  beat  them  till  they're  hot; 

For  only  enmity  can  train  and  trounce 

The  cortex  and  the  muscle  to  an  ounce. 

Let  Socialists  deny,  mistaking  peace, 

That  only  with  the  world  will  warfare  cease; 

When  we  behold  the  battle-flags  unfurled 

We  know  the  fates  phlebotomise  the  world, 


TESTAMENT   OF   SIR    SIMPLEX  85 

And  alternate  with  peace's  patent  pill, 
The  old  heroic  cure  for  every  ill. 

Life  was  a  railway  journey;  foe  and  friend, 

Infected  with  nostalgia  of  the  end, 

Awaited  patiently  the  crack  of  doom; 

But  thank  the  powers  that  be,  the  motor  boom, 

Predestined  to  postpone  the  judgment-day, 

Arrived  in  time  to  show  a  better  way. 

And  when  the  Automobile  came,  we  found 

Our  incorrupt  opinion  safe  and  sound, 

Inoculated  only  by  the  schism, 

For  ever  proof  against  all  Socialism. 

The  motor  stops  the  decadence:  not  all 

Are  in  the  same  train  with  the  prodigal, 

The  Christian  scientist,  the  souteneur, 

The  Gothamite,  the  man  from  anywhere, 

Domestic  Gill  and  idiomatic  Jack, 

The   wheedling   knave,    the   sneak,    the   hectoring 

quack ; 
The  man  of  broader  mind  and  farther  goal 
Is  not  entrained  with  Lubin  Littlesoul; 
Your  gentleman  by  birth  and  quickened  sense, 
Refined  requirements  and  abundant  pence, 
And  men  of  faculty  and  swelling  aim 
Who  conquer  riches,  power,  position,  fame, 
Are  not  entrained  with  loafers,  quibblers,  cranks, 


86  TESTAMENT    OF   SIR    SIMPLEX 

Nor  with  the  Mob  who  never  leave  the  ranks, 
With  plodding  dullness,  unambitious  ease, 
And  discontented  incapacities. 

Goodwill  is  in  the  blood,  in  you  and  me, 

And  most  in  men  of  wealth  and  pedigree; 

So  rich  and  poor,  men,  women,  age  and  youth 

Imagined  some  ingredient  of  truth 

In  Socialistic  faith  that  there  could  be 

A  common  basis  of  equality. 

But  now  we  know  and  by  the  motor  swear 

The  prepossession  was  as  false  as  fair; 

Men  are  not  equal;  no  two  intellects 

Are  of  a  calibre;  desires,  defects, 

Powers,  aptitudes,  are  never  on  a  par, 

No  more  than  fingerprints  and  noses  are. 

And  on  my  soul  and  conscience,  I  maintain 

Political  equality's  as  vain 

As  personal:  for  instance,  I  would  place 

The  franchise  on  a  principle  of  race, 

And  give  the  Saxon's  forward  reach  a  felt 

Prepotence  o'er  the  backward-glancing  Celt; 

And  if  his  chauffeur  counts  as  one,  why  then 

Sir  Simon  Simplex  should  be  reckoned  ten. 

I  call  Democracy  archaic,  just 

As  manhood  suffrage  is  atavic  lust 

For  folkmotes  of  the  prime,  whose  analogue 


TESTAMENT   OF   SIR   SIMPLEX  87 

In  travel  was  the  train,  a  passing  vogue: 

The  automobile  put  an  end  to  that, 

And  left  Democracy  as  fallen  and  flat 

As  railway-stock.     Wealth  and  the  crafty  hand 

That  gathers  wealth  had  always  at  command 

Horse-carriages  for  private  travel,  but 

The  pace  had  got  beyond  that  leisured  rut; 

Class,  mass  and  mob  for  fifty  years  and  more 

Had  all  to  travel  in  the  jangling  roar 

Of  railways,  the  nomadic  caravan 

That  stifled  individual  mind  in  man, 

Till  automobilism  arose  at  last! 

Now  with  the  splendid  periods  of  the  past 

Our  youthful  century  is  proudly  linked; 

And  things  that  Socialism  supposed  extinct, 

Degree,  nobility  and  noble  strife, 

A  form,  a  style,  a  privacy  in  life 

Will  reappear;  and,  crowning  Nature's  plan, 

The  individual  and  the  gentleman 

In  England  reassume  his  lawful  place 

And  vindicate  the  greatness  of  the  race. 


THE    CAKE    OF    MITHRIDATES 

Quenched  is  the  fire  on  autumn's  hearth, 
The  ingle  vacant,  hushed  the  song; 

But  the  resolved,  consistent  earth, 
And  Nature,  tolerant  and  strong, 

Serenely  wait  the  ordered  change 

Of  times  and  tides.     Ten  thousand  years 
Of  day  and  night,  the  scope  and  range 

Of  liberal  seasons;  smiles  and  tears 

Of  June  and  April;  brumal  storm 

Autumnal  calm,  and  flower  and  fruit: 

These  are  the  rich  content,  the  form 
Of  Nature's  mind;  these  constitute 

The  academe  and  discipline, 

The  joust  and  knightly  exercise, 

The  culture  of  the  earth  wherein 
The  earth's  profound  composure  lies. 

The  wisdom  of  the  earth  excels 
The  craft  and  skill  of  every  age. 

Witness  the  tale  the  Persian  tells 
Of  Mithridates,  King  and  mage. 
88 


THE   CAKE   OF   MITHRIDATES  89 

The  whole  divan  extolled  his  powers: 

They  said  the  soil  revered  him  so, 
That,  if  he  planted  sawdust,  flowers 

Of  every  hue  would  promptly  grow. 

"  So  be  it!  "  quoth  the  King  of  Kings: 
"  Bring  hither  sweepings  of  the  street, 

Chaff,  sawdust,  money,  jewels,  rings, 
And  fifty  grains  of  summer  wheat." 

He  sowed  them  in  a  fertile  bed, 

And  set  a  guard  about  the  plot 
Both  day  and  night:  "Although,"  he  said, 

"The  earth  is  honest,  men  are  not." 

The  wheat  betimes  began  to  grow. 

In  shame  as  in  a  mordant  steeped, 
The  viziers,  sulking  in  a  row, 

Beheld  at  length  the  harvest  reaped. 

Said  then  the  King,  "  A  sheaf !     Proceed : 
Thresh,  winnow,  grind  it,  bolt  and  bake, 

And  bring  with  all  convenient  speed 
Of  leavened  bread  a  goodly  cake. 

"  For  you,   my  worthy   viziers — come ! 

The  marvellous  crops  you  promised  me?" 
The  whole  perturbed  divan,  as  dumb 

As  oysters,  felt  indeed  at  sea. 


90  THE   CAKE    OF    MITHRIDATES 

"  Ha!  "  cried  the  King,  "when  shall  we  laugh 
At  prodigies  great  nature  grants 

Almighty  monarchs?     Fruit  of  chaff, 

Where  is  it?    Where,  my  sawdust-plants? 

"The  vine  and  vintage  of  my  gold? 

My  silver-bushes,  where  are  they? 
My  coin  should  yield  a  hundred-fold 

By  nature's  lavish  usury! 

"  My  fragrant  banks  of  posied  rings 

Where  diamonds  blossom,  show  me;  show 
In  arbours  where  the  bulbul  sings 
A  branch  of  budding  rubies  glow. 

"  My  jewel-orchards,  money-shrubs? 

Perhaps  they're  sprouting  underground? 
My  cash,  at  least,  among  the  grubs — 

My  cash  and  gems!     Let  them  be  found! 

"Dig,  viziers,  dig!"     The  viziers  dug: 
Among  the  deep  roots  of  the  grain, 

With  here  an  earthworm,  there  a  slug 
They  found  the  treasure,  sowed  in  vain. 

And  all  the  sweepings  of  the  streets, 
The  chaff,  the  rubbish?    Like  a  jest 

Forgiven,   forgotten!     So  discreet 
Is  nature's  kindly  alkahest. 


THE   CAKE   OF   MITHRIDATES  91 

Then  every  vizier  lost  his  nerve, 
Expecting  death,  a  prompt  despatch. 

But  Mithridates  said,  "  Observe 
How  great  the  soil  is:  bulbuls  hatch 

"  The  cuckoo's  eggs,  whereas  the  earth 

Ignores  the  costliest  stone  to  feed 
With  chosen  fare  and  bring  to  birth 

The  soul  of  any  honest  seed. 

"The  earth  is  true  and  harbours  not 

Imposture:  all  your  flattering  lies 
Are  buried  in  this  garden-plot; 

Be  genuine  if  you  would  be  wise." 

With  that  the  baker,  breathing  spice, 
Produced  the  cake  hot  from  the  fire, 

And  every  vizier  ate  a  slice 
Resolving  to  be  less  a  liar. 


THE   LUTANIST 

The  harvests  of  purple  and  gold 

Are  garnered  and  trodden;  dead  leaves 
To-morrow  will  carpet  the  wold; 

And  the  arbours  and  sylvan  eaves 
Dismantled,  no  welcome  extend; 

The  bowers  and  sheltering  eaves 
Will  witness  to-morrow  the  end 

Of  their  stained,  of  their  sumptuous  leaves, 
While   tempests   apparel  the  wold 
In  their  cast-off  crimson  and  gold. 

But  I  of  abundance  to  be 

Think  only,  the  corn  and  the  wine, 
The  manifold  wealth  of  the  sea 

And  the  harvest-home  of  the  mine. 
Decay  and  the  fall  of  leaf, 

Lost  lives  in  the  tenebrous  mine, 
Disaster,  disconsolate  grief 

Molest  not  the  corn  and  the  wine, 
The  infinite  wealth  of  the  sea 
And  the  bountiful  harvests  to  be. 

For  beneath  are  the  heavens  and  above, 
And  time  is  a  silken  yoke; 
92 


THE   LUTANIST  93 

My  lute  is  my  friend;  and  I  love 

A  beautiful  maid  of  my  folk — 
A  marvel  to  see  and  adore, 

Astounding  her  foes  and  her  folk 
With  silence  and  exquisite  lore 

Of  youth  and  its  delicate  yoke, 
With  wonderful  wisdom  in  love, 
And  the  music  beneath  and  above. 

I  think  how  her  beauty  would  kill 

A  lover  less  ardent  than  I, 
I  faint  and  my  heart  stands  still 

In  the  street  when  she  passes  by; 
My  lute,  I  bid  it  be  dumb: — 

"  Hush,  for  my  love  goes  by! 
O  hush,  or  she  may  not  come!  " 

A  lover  less  ardent  than  I 
Her  beauty  might  palsy,  might  kill! 
Lute-strings,  heart-strings,  be  still! 

But  when  she  has  passed,  a  spell 

Delivers  my  voice  and  my  lute; 
My  songs  and  my  melodies  well 

Like  fountains;  like  clusters  of  fruit 
My  fantasy  ripens;  my  rhymes, 

With  savour  of  wayside  fruit 
And  sweet  as  aerial  chimes 

Of  flower-bells,  ring  to  my  lute; 


94  THE  LUTANIST 

Like  fountains  my  melodies  well 

When  the  thought  of  her  works  like  a  spell. 

She  walks  and  the  emerald  lawn 

Is  jewelled  at  every  tread ; 
Like  the  burning  tresses  of  dawn 

The  virgin  gold  of  her  head 
Illumines  the  land  and  the  sea; 

From  her  glittering  feet  to  her  head 
Is  the  essence  of  being — is  she 

Who  walks  with  a  magical  tread 
As  she  dazzles  the  eyes  of  dawn 
And  jewels  the  grass-green  lawn. 

Though  the  harvests  of  purple  and  gold 

Are  garnered,  and  fallen  leaves 
To-morrow  will  carpet  the  wold, 

I   think  how  the  sylvan  eaves 
A  welcome  in  summer  extend, 

How  the  bowers  and  the  sheltering  eaves 
Will  mantle  in  summer  and  bend 

With  their  bloom  and  their  burden  of  leaves. 
And  autumn  apparel  the  wold 
In  harvests  of  purple  and  gold. 


ST.    MICHAEL'S    MOUNT 

St.  Michael's  Mount,  the  tidal  isle, 

In  May  with  daffodils  and  lilies 
Is  kirtled  gorgeously  a  while 

As  ne'er  another  English  hill  is: 
About  the  precipices  cling 
The  rich  renascence  robes  of  Spring. 

Her  gold  and  silver,  nature's  gifts, 

The  prodigal  with  both  hands  showers: 
O  not  in  patches,  not  in  drifts 

But  round  and  round  a  mount  of  flowers — 
Of  lilies  and  of  daffodils, 
The  envy  of  all  other  hills. 

And  on  the  lofty  summit  looms 

The  castle:     None  could  build  or  plan  it. 
The  four-square  foliage  springs  and  blooms, 
The  piled  elaborate  flower  of  granite, 
That  not  the  sun  can  wither;  no, 
Nor  any  tempest  overthrow. 


95 


TWO   DOGS 

Two  dogs  on  Bournemouth  beach:  a  mongrel,  one, 
With  spaniel  plainest  on  the  palimpsest, 
The  blur  of  muddled  stock;  the  other,  bred, 
With  tapering  muzzle,  rising  brow,  strong  jaw — 
A  terrier  to  the  tail's  expressive  tip, 
Magnetic,  nimble,  endlessly  alert. 

The  mongrel,  wet  and  shivering,  at  my  feet 
Deposited  a  wedge  of  half-inch  board, 
A  foot  in  length  and  splintered  at  the  butt ; 
Withdrew  a  yard  and  crouched  in  act  to  spring, 
While  to  and  fro  between  his  wedge  and  me 
The  glancing  shuttle  of  his  eager  look 
A  purpose  wove.     The  terrier,  ears  a-cock, 
And  neck  one  curve  of  sheer  intelligence, 
Stood  sentinel:  no  sound,  no  movement,  save 
The  mongrel's  telegraphic  eyes,  bespoke 
The  object  of  the  canine  pantomime. 

I  stooped  to  grasp  the  wedge,  knowing  the  game; 
But  like  a  thing  uncoiled  the  mongrel  snapped 
It  off,  and  promptly  set  it  out  again, 
The  terrier  at  his  quarters,  every  nerve 
Waltzing  inside  his  lithe  rigidity. 
96 


TWO   DOGS  97 

"More  complex  than  I  thought!"    Again  I  made 
To  seize  the  wedge;  again  the  mongrel  won, 
Whipped    off   the   Jack,    relaid   it,   crouched    and 

watched, 
The  terrier  at  attention  all  the  time. 
I  won  the  third  bout:  ere  the  mongrel  snapped 
His  toy,  I  stayed  my  hand:  he  halted,  half 
Across  the  neutral  ground,  and  in  the  pause 
Of  doubt  I  seized  the  prize.     A  vanquished  yelp 
From  both;  and  then  intensest  vigilance. 

Together,  when  I  tossed  the  wedge,  they  plunged 
Before  it  reached  the  sea.    The  mongrel,  out 
Among  the  waves,  and  standing  to  them,  meant 
Heroic  business;  but  the  terrier  dodged 
Behind,  adroitly  scouting  in  the  surf, 
And  seized  the  wedge,  rebutted  by  the  tide, 
In  shallow  water,  while  the  mongrel  searched 
The  English  Channel  on  his  hind-legs  poised. 
The  terrier  laid  the  trophy  at  my  feet: 
And  neither  dog  protested  when  I  took 
The  wedge:  the  overture  of  their  marine 
Diversion  had  been  played  out  once  for  all. 

A  second  match  the  reckless  mongrel  won, 
Vanishing  twice  under  the  heavy  surf, 
Before  he  found  and  brought  the  prize  to  land. 
Then  for  an  hour  the  aquatic  sport  went  on, 


98  TWO    DOGS 

And  still  the  mongrel  took  the  heroic  role, 
The  terrier  hanging  deftly  in  the  rear. 
Sometimes  the  terrier  when  the  mongrel  found 
Betrayed  a  jealous  scorn,  as  who  should  say, 
"  Your  hero's  always  a  vulgarian !     Pah !  " 
But  when  the  mongrel  missed,  after  a  fight 
With  such  a  sea  of  troubles,  and  saw  the  prize 
Grabbed  by  the  terrier  in  an  inch  of  surf, 
He  seemed  entirely  satisfied,  and  watched 
With  more  pathetic  vigilance  the  cast 
That  followed. 

"  Once   a   passion,   mongrel,    this 
Retrieving  of  a  stick,"  I  told  the  brute, 
"  Has  now  become  a  vice  with  you.     Go  home! 
Wet  to  the  marrow  and  palsied  with  the  cold, 
You  won't  give  in,  and,  good  or  bad,  you've  earned 
My  admiration.     Go  home  now  and  get  warm, 
And  the  best  bone  in  the  pantry."     As  I  talked 
I  stripped  the  water  from  his  hybrid  coat, 
Laughed  and  made  much  of  him — which  mortified 
The  funking  terrier. 

"  I'm  despised,  it  seems !  " 
The  terrier  thought.     "  My  cleverness  (my  feet 
Are  barely  wet!)  beside  the  mongrel's  zeal 
Appears  timidity.    This  biped's  mad 


TWO   DOGS  99 

To   pet   the   stupid   brute.     Yap!     Yah!"     He 

seized 
The  wedge  and  went;  and  at  his  heels  at  once, 
Without  a  thought  of  me,  the  mongrel  trudged. 

Along  the  beach,  smokers  of  cigarettes, 
All  sixpenny-novel-readers  to  a  man, 
Attracted   Master   Terrier.     Again   the   wedge, 
Passed  to  the  loyal  mongrel,  was  teed  with  care; 
Again  the  fateful  overture  began. 
Upon  the  fourth  attempt,  and  not  before, 
And  by  a  feint  at  that,  the  challenged  youth 
(Most  equable,  be  sure,  of  all  the  group: 
Allow  the  veriest  dog  to  measure  men!) 
Secured  the  soaked  and  splintered  scrap  of  deal. 

Thereafter,  as  with  me,  the  game  progressed, 
The  breathless,  shivering  mongrel,  rushing  out 
Into  the  heavy  surf,  there  to  be  tossed 
And  tumbled  like  a  floating  bunch  of  kelp, 
While  gingerly  the  terrier  picked  his  steps 
Strategic  in  the  rear,  and  snapped  the  prize 
Oftener  than  his  more  adventurous,  more 
Romantic,  more  devoted  rival  did. 
The  uncomfortable  moral  glares  at  one! 
And,  further,  in  the  mongrel's  wistful  mind 
A  primitive  idea  darkly  wrought: 


ioo  TWO   DOGS 

Having  once  lost  the  prize  in  the  overture 

With  his  bipedal  rival,  he  felt  himself 

In  honour  and  in  conscience  bound  to  plunge 

For  ever  after  it  at  the  winner's  will. 

But  the  smart  terrier  was  an  Overdog, 

And    knew    a    trick    worth    two    of    that.      He 

thought — 
If  canine  cerebration  works  like  ours, 
And  I  interpret  the  canine  mind  aright — 
"  Let  men  and  mongrels  worry  and  wet  their  coats ! 
I  use  my  brains  and  choose  the  better  part. 
Quick-witted  ease  and   self-approval  lift 
Me  miles  above  this  anxious  cur,  absorbed, 
Body  and  soul,  in  playing  a  game  I  win 
Without  an  effort.     And  yet  the  mongrel  seems 
The  happier  dog.     How's  that?     Belike,   the  old 
Compensatory  principle  again. 
I  have  pre-eminence  and  conscious  worth; 
And  he  has  power  to  fling  himself  away 
For  anything  or  nothing.     Men  and  dogs, 
What  an  unfathomable  world  it  is!  " 


THE   WASP 

Once  as  I  went  by  rail  to  Epping  Street, 
Both  windows  being  open,  a  wasp  flew  in; 
Through  the  compartment  swung  and  almost  out, 
Scarce  seen,   scarce  heard;   but   dead   against   the 

pane 
Entitled  "  Smoking,"  did  the  train's  career 
Arrest  her  passage.     Such  a  wonderful 
Impervious  transparency,  before 
That  palpitating  moment,  had  never  yet 
Her  airy  voyage  thwarted.     Undismayed, 
With  diligence  incomparable,  she  sought 
An  exit,  till  the  letters  like  a  snare 
Entangled  her;  or  else  the  frosted  glass 
And  signature  indelible  appeared 
The  key  to  all  the  mystery:  there  she  groped, 
And  flirted  petulant  wings,   and   fiercely  sang 
A  counter-spell  against  the  sorcery, 
The  sheer  enchantment  that  inhibited 
Her  access  to  the  world — her  birthright  there! 
So  visible,  and  so  beyond  her  reach! 
Baffled  and  raging  like  a  tragic  queen, 
She  left  at  last  the  stencilled  tablet;  roamed 
The  pane  a  while  to  cool  her  regal  ire, 
Then  tentatively  touched  the  window-frame: 

IOI 


io2  THE    WASP 

Sure  footing  still,  though  rougher  than  the  glass; 
Dissimilar  in  texture,  and  so  obscure! 

Perplexed  now  by  opacity,  with  foot  and  wing 
She  coasted  up  and  down  the  wood  and  worked 
Her  wrath  to  passion-point  again.     Then  from  the 

frame 
She  slipped  by  chance  into  the  open  space 
Left  by  the  lowered  sash: — the  world  once  more 
In  sight!     She  paused;  she  closed  her  wings,  and 

felt 
The  air  with  learned  antennae  for  the  smooth 
Resistance  that  she  knew  now  must  belong 
To  such  mysterious  transparences. 
No  foothold?     Down  she  fell — six  inches  down! — 
Hovered  a  second,  dazed  and  dubious  still; 
Then  soared  away,  a  captive  queen  set  free. 


THE  THAMES   EMBANKMENT 

As  grey  and  dank  as  dust  and  ashes  slaked 

With  wash  of  urban  tides  the  morning  lowered; 

But  over  Chelsea  Bridge  the  sagging  sky 

Had  colour  in  it — blots  of  faintest  bronze, 

The  stains  of  daybreak.     Westward  slabs  of  light 

From  vapour  disentangled,  sparsely  glazed 

The  panelled  firmament;  but  vapour  held 

The  morning  captive  in  the  smoky  east. 

At  lowest  ebb  the  tide  on  either  bank 

Laid  bare  the  fat  mud  of  the  Thames,  all  pinched 

And  scalloped  thick  with  dwarfish  surges.     Cranes, 

Derricks  and  chimney-stalks  of  the  Surrey-side, 

Inverted  shadows,  in  the  motionless, 

Dull,  leaden  mirror  of  the  channel  hung: 

Black  flags  of  smoke  broke  out,  and  in  the  dead 

Sheen  of  the  water  hovered  underneath, 

As  in  the  upper  region,  listlessly, 

Across  the  viaduct,  trailing  plumes  of  steam, 

The  trains  clanked  in  and  out. 

Slowly   the   sun 
Undid  the  homespun  swathing  of  the  clouds, 
And  splashed  his  image  on  the  northern  shore — 
A  thing  extravagantly  beautiful: 
103 


io4  THE    THAMES    EMBANKMENT 

The  glistening,  close-grained  canvas  of  the  mud 
Like  hammered  copper  shone,  and  all  about 
The  burning  centre  of  the  mirror'd  orb's 
Illimitable  depth  of  silver  fire 
Harmonious  beams,  the  overtones  of  light, 
Suffused  the  emboss'd,  metallic  river  bank. 
Woven  of  rainbows  a  dewdrop  can  dissolve 
And  packed  with  power  a  simple  lens  can  wield, 
The  perfect,  only  source  of  beauty,  light 
Reforms  uncouthest  shapelessness  and  turns 
Decoloured   refuse  into  ornament; 
The  leafless  trees  that  lined  the  vacant  street 
Had  all  their  stems  picked  out  in  golden  scales, 
Their  branches  carved  in  ebony;  and  shed 
Around  them  by  the  sanction  of  the  morn 
In  lieu  of  leaves  each  wore  an  aureole. 

Barges  at  anchor,  barges  stranded,  hulks 
Ungainly,  in  the  unshorn  beams  and  rich 
Replenished   planet   of   a   winter  sun, 
Appeared  ethereal,  and  about  to  glide 
On  high  adventure  chartered,  swift  away 
For  regions  undiscovered. 

Huddled  wharfs 
A  while,  and  then  once  more  a  reach  of  Thames 
Visibly  flowing  where  the  sun  and  wind 
Together  caught  the  current.     Quays  and  piers 


THE   THAMES    EMBANKMENT  ioS 

To  Vauxhall  Bridge,  and  there  the  Baltic  Wharf 

Exhibited  its  wonders:  figureheads 

Of  the  old  wooden  walls  on  gate  and  post — 

Colossal   torsos,  bulky  bosoms  thrown 

Against  the  storm,  sublime  uplifted  eyes 

Telling  the  stars.     As  white  as  ghosts 

They  overhung  the  way,  usurping  time 

With  carved  memorials  of  the  past.     Forlorn 

Elysium  of  the  might  of  England! 

Gulls 
Riparian  scavengers,  arose  and  wheeled 
About  my  head,  for  morsels  begging  loud 
With  savage  cries  that  piercingly  reverbed 
The  tempest's  dissonance.     Birds  in  themselves 
Unmusical   and   uninventive  ape 
Impressive  things  with  mocking  undesigned: 
The  eagle's  bark  mimics  the  crashing  noise 
That  shakes'  his  eyry  when  the  thunder  roars; 
And  chanticleer's  imperious  trumpet-call 
Re-echoes  round  the  world  his  ancestor's 
Barbaric  high-wrought  challenge  to  the  dawn; 
But  birds  of  homely  feather  and  tuneful  throat, 
With  music  in  themselves  and  masterdom, 
To  beauty  turn  obsessive  sight  and  sounds: 
The  mounting  larks,  compact  of  joyful  fire, 
Render  the  coloured  sunlight  into  song; 
Adventurous  and  impassioned  nightingales 


106  THE   THAMES    EMBANKMENT 

Transmute  the  stormy  equinox  they  breast 

With  courage  high,  for  hawthorn  thickets  bound 

When  spring  arrives,  into  the  melody 

That  floods  the  forest  aisles;  the  robin  draws 

Miraculously  from  the  rippling  brook 

The  red  wine  of  his  lay;  blackbird  and  thrush, 

Prime-artists  of  the  woodland,  proudly  take 

All  things  sonorous  for  their  province,  weave 

The  gold-veined  thunder  and  the  crystal  showers, 

The  winds,  the  rivers  and  the  choir  of  birds 

In  the  rich  strains  of  their  chromatic  score. 

By  magic  mechanism  the  weltering  clouds 

Re-grouped  themselves  in  continents  and  isles 

That   diapered   the   azure   firmament; 

And  sombre  chains  of  cumulus,  outlined 

In  ruddy  shade  along  the  house-tops  loomed, 

Phantasmal  Alp  on  Alp.     The  sunbeams  span 

Chaotic  vapour  into  cosmic  forms, 

And  juggled  in  the  sky,  with  hoods  of  cloud 

As  jesters  twirl  on  sticks  their  booby-caps — 

The  potent  sunbeams,  that  had  fished  the  whole 

Enormous  mass  of  moisture  from  the  sea, 

Kneaded,   divided  and   divided,  wrought 

And  turned  it  to  a  thousand  fantasies 

Upon  the  ancient  potter's  wheel,  the  earth. 


THE   ARISTOCRAT    OF   THE   ROAD 

More  than  one  way  of  walking?     Verily; 
But,  for  the  art  of  walking,  only  one. 
Beginners  in  the  ambulative  art, 
As  in  all  art,  are  immethodical : 
Your  want  of  method,  rightly  understood, 
Is  faculty,  and  not  its  absence;  style 
Adventurous  of  genius;  say,  a  gift; 
Immethod,  necessary  handicap 
Upon  originality,   that  loses 
Matches  many  on  time  or  weight,  but  beats 
The  winner  virtually.     The  crammer's  wiles, 
And  royal  roads  to  knowledge,  short-cuts,  keys, 
And  time-and-labour-saving  mechanism 
Beset  the  ambulative  acolyte; 
But  true  originality  in  art 
Would  not  at  first,  even  if  it  could,  possess 
Impeccable  technique;  and  your  foredoomed 
Pedestrian  errs  designedly   (if  one 
Whose  privilege  it  is  to  deviate 
Can  ever  be  arraigned  for  trespass)  bent 
On  quitting,  jeopardy  or  none,  the  old 
Immediately  seductive  methods  blazed 
By  trained  precursors  in  pedestrial  art. 
107 


108         THE    ARISTOCRAT    OF   THE   ROAD 

At  first  then  the  prospective  walker,  rash 
As  any  hero,  dedicates  himself 
To  chance.     A  vagabond  upon  the  earth, 
He  leads  a  life  uncertain:  art  and  craft 
Pedalian  suffer  secret  chrysalid 
Probations  and  adventures  ere  they  gain 
The  ultimate   imago  of  complete 
Pedestrianism.      Through    gross   suburban    miles 
And  over  leagues  of  undistinguished  ground 
He  plods,  he  tramps.     Utilitarian  thoughts 
Of  exercise  and  health  extenuate 
The  dullness  of  the  duty;  he  persuades 
Himself  he  likes  it;  finds,  where  none  exist, 
Amazing  qualities;  and  tires  his  limbs, 
His  thought,  his  fancy,  o'er  and  o'er  again. 
But  in  the  dismal  watches  of  the  night 
He  knows  it  all  delusion;  beauty  none, 
Nor  pleasure  in  it;  ennui  only — eased 
By  speculation  on  the  wayside-inn, 
Or  country-town  hotel  where  lunch  permits 
An  hour's  oblivion  of  his  self-imposed, 
His  thriftless  drudgery.     Despair! — And  life? 
Worth  picking  from  the  gutter?    No;  not  worth 
The  stooping  for!     Natheless,  a  walker  born, 
He  takes  the  road  next  day;  steps  out  once  more, 
As  if  the  world  were  just  begun,  and  he, 
Sole  monarch ;  plods  the  suburb,  tramps  the  waste- 
Again  returning  baffled  and  dismayed. 


THE    ARISTOCRAT    OF   THE   ROAD        109 

He  tries  a  comrade.    Worse  and  worse! — for  that, 

In  high  pedestrianism,  turns  out  to  be 

A  double  misery,  a  manacled 

Contingence   with   vexation.     Walking-tours? 

Belletrists  crack  them  up.     He  takes  one: — lo, 

A  sheer  atrocity!     A  man  may  like 

To  drink,  but  who  would  quench  next  morning's 

drouth, 
Unholy  though  it  be,  with  torture  forte 
Et  dure  in  gallon  draughts  when  by  his  bed 
A  hair  gleams  of  the  dog  that  bit  him!     Tours 
Pedestrious?    Madness,  like  the  poet's  who  thought 
To  write  a  thousand  sonnets  at  the  rate 
Of  three  a  day!    And  this  the  tale  of  years! 

Forth  from  his  travail  and  despair  at  last, 
Crash  through  his  plodding  apparatus,  breaks 
The  dawn  of  art.     He  recollects  a  mile, 
Or  half  a  mile  that  pleased  him;  a  furlong  here, 
And  there  a  hundred  yards ;  or  an  hour's  march 
Over  some  curve  of  the  world  when  everything 
Above  him  and  about  him  from  the  zenith 
To  the  sky-edge,  and  radiant  from  his  feet 
Toward  every  cardinal  point,  put  off  the  veil, 
Becoming  evident  as  guilt  or  love,  as  things 
That  cannot  hide: — becoming  him, 
And  he  becoming  them;  and  all  his  past 
And  all  his  future  wholly  what  they  are, 


no        THE   ARISTOCRAT   OF   THE   ROAD 

The  very  form  and  meaning  of  the  earth 
Itself.     And  at  these  times  he  recollects, 
And  in  these  places,  how  his  thoughts  were  clear 
As  crystal,  deeper  than  the  sea,  as  swift 
As  light — the  pulse,  the  bosom  and  the  zone 
Of  beauty  infinite.     And  then  and  there 
Whatever  he  imagined  took  at  once 
A  bodily  shape;  and  nought  conceived  or  done 
Since  life  began  appeared  irrational, 
Wanton  or  needless.    Since,  the  world  and  fate, 
Material  functions  of  each  other,  apt 
As  syllables  of  power  and  magic  mind 
In  some  self-reading  riddle,  as  fracted  bits 
In  self-adjusting  instruments  that  play 
Unheard  ethereal  music  of  the  spheres, 
Assumed  their  places  equably;  all  things 
Fell  duly  into  line  and  dressed  their  ranks. 

Thus  art  begins,  as  sudden  as  a  star 

In  some  unconstellated  tract  of  space, 

Where  two  extinct  long-wandering  orbs  collide 

And  smite  into  each  other  and  become 

A  lamp  of  glory,  no  crepuscular 

Uncertainty,  no  interval  between 

The  old  misfortune  and  the  new  delight. 

And  thus  at  once  the  plodder  of  the  waste 

Attains  utility  and  finds  himself 

Aristocrat  and  patron  of  the  road ; 


THE   ARISTOCRAT   OF  THE   ROAD         m 

The  artizan,  an  artist — aristocrat 

And  artist  being  ever  synonymes. 

All  vagabondage,  all  bohemianism, 

All  errantry,  the  unlicked,  chrysalid 

Condition  of  aristocracy  and  art, 

Cut  off  for  ever,  the  proud  pedestrian  free 

Of  the  world,  walks  only  now  in  picked  resorts, 

And  can  without  a  chart,  without  a  guide, 

Discover  lands  richer  than  El  Dorado, 

Sweeter  than  Beulah,  and  with  ease 

Ascend  secluded  mountains  more  delectable 

Than  heights  in  ancient  pilgrimages  famed, 

Or  myth-clad  hills,  or  summits  of  romance. 

Old  traversed  roads  he  traverses  again, 

Untroubled;  nothing  new  he  sees 

Except  the  stretch  of  pleasure-ground,  like  one 

Who  turns  the  leaves  o'er  of  a  tedious  book, 

Careless  of  verbiage  to  reperuse 

The  single  page  inspired;  in  regions  new 

He  goes  directly  to  his  own  like  beasts 

That  never  miss  the  way;  and  having  marked 

A  province  with  the  beauties  of  his  choice, 

In  them  alone  he  walks,  lord  of  the  world. 


ROAD  AND   RAIL 

March  Many-weathers,  bluff  and  affable, 

The  usher  and  the  pursuivant  of  Spring, 

Had    sent    his    North   wind    blaring    through    the 

world — 
A  mundane  wind  that  held  the  earth,  and  puffed 
The  smoke  of  urban  fire  and  furnace  far 
Afield.     An  ashen  canopy  of  cloud, 
The  dense  immobled  sky,  high-pitched  above 
The  wind's  terrestrial  office,  overhung 
The  city  when  the  morning  train  drew  out. 
Leaping  along  the  land  from  town  to  town, 
Its  iron  lungs  respired  its  breath  of  steam, 
Its  resonant  flanges,   and  its  vertebral 
Loose-jointed  carcase  of  a  centipede 
Gigantic,  hugged  and  ground  the  parallel 
Adjusted  metals  of  its  destined  way 
With  apathetic  fatalism,  the  mark 
Of  all  machinery. — From  Paddington 
To   Basingstoke   the  world   seemed   standing  still: 
Nothing  astir  between  the  firmaments 
Except  the  aimless  tumult  of  the  wind, 
And  clanging  travail  of  the  ponderous  train 
In  labour  with  its  journey  on  the  smooth, 
The  includible,  the  shining  rails. 


ROAD    AND    RAIL  113 

But  prompt  at  Basingstoke  an  interlude 
Began:  a  reckless  youth,  possessed  with  seven 
Innocuous   devils   of   self-consciousness 
Primeval,  bouncing  in  irruptively, 
Lusty- Juventus-wise,  annexed  the  whole 
Compartment — as  a  pendant  to  the  earth, 
Already  his!     Wind-shaven,  ruddy;  hunched 
And  big;  all  knees  and  knuckles;  with  a  mouth 
That  opened  like  a  portal;  fleshy  chops 
And  turned-up  nose  widespread,  the  signature 
Of  jollity;  a  shapeless,  elvish  skull; 
His  little  pig's  eyes  in  their  sockets  soused 
But  simmering  merrily;  just  twenty  years; 
One  radiation  of  nervous  energy; 
A  limber  tongue  and  most  unquenchable, 
Complacent  blaze  of  indiscretion,  soft 
As  a  night-light  in  a  nursery.     "  Where  away  ?  " 
Quoth  he;  and   "Hang  the  weather!     I've  seen 

worse, 
In   my  time,   for  the  season."     Then:     Did   we 

think 
The  train  was  doing  thirty  or  forty  miles 
An  hour?     Sometimes,  by  instinct,  he  could  tell 
To  a  mile  the  rate  at  which  a  train  went. 
This  morning,  for  a  wonder,  he  couldn't  trust 
His  judgment  in  the  matter; — annoying! — Still 
A  man's  form  varied,  and  we  must  excuse 
His  inability  to  gauge  our  speed. 


n+  ROAD   AND   RAIL 

Good  golf  about  here, — very!     Did  we  play? 

And,  by  the  bye,  talking  of  golf,  he  did 

A  brilliant  thing  just  now: — missing  the  train 

At  Farnham  on  the  other  line,  instead 

Of  waiting  for  the  next,  he  tramped  across 

To  Basingstoke, — some  decent  tale  of  miles; 

His  destination  being  Winchester, 

Either  line  suited, — see?     The  weather, — yes, 

The    weather; — healthy,    of    course; — your    moist 

cold  kills; 
Your  dry  cold  cures; — to-day  it  seemed  as  cold, — 
But  that  must  be  the  wind ;  in  sheltered  roads 
It  smelt  like  Spring; — to-morrow, — who  could  tell 
To-morrow's  weather? — a  funny  climate,  ours! 
Was  that  a  cow  there,  or  a — Yes,  a  cow. 
He  didn't  know  how  we  regarded  it, 
But  he,  for  his  part,  took  it  that  the  hand 
That  rocked  the  cradle  ruled  the  world :  to  drop 
A  signature  into  a  ballot-box 
Would  make  no  earthly!     (Slang,  elliptical.) 
Although  we  must  remember,  all  of  us, 
This  rocking  of  the  cradle  was  out  of  date; 
But  that  he  wouldn't  canvass; — we  were  to  mind 
There  must  be  no  mistake:  women  were  women 
All  the  world  to  nothing;  and — mark  him — if 
They  had  political  enfranchisement, 
No  one  could  say — no  one  at  all! — what  might 
And  mightn't  happen:  not  a  doubt  of  that. 


ROAD    AND    RAIL  115 

Getting  along  more  quickly;  forty  miles, 
He  thought;  or  less,  perhaps.     He  meant  to  lunch 
At  Winchester;  then  hire  a  trap  and  drive    .    .    . 
"  Instanter  to  the  devil,"  someone  sighed. 

All  this,  and  further,  an  infinitude 
Of  dislocated  prattle,  with  a  smile 
Indelible,  and  such  a  negligent 
Absorbition*  in  self  that  no  appeal, 
Except  a  sheer  affront,  abuse,  or  blow, 
Could  have  revealed  remotely  any  gleam 
Or  shade,  to  him  apparent,  of  his  own 
Insipid   and    grotesque   enormity! 
When  time,  distemper  or  disaster  sap 
Such  individuals,  and  they  see  themselves, 
In  facets  of  disrupted  character, 
As  others  see  them,  stupid  and  absurd, 
How  bad  the  quarter  of  an  hour  must  be! 
Natheless  there  are  extant  a  hearty  breed, 
Incorrigibly  cheerful,  who  behold 
Themselves  for  ever  in  the  best  of  lights. 
And  by  the  pipe  and  bowl  of  Old  King  Cole 
They  have  the  best  of  it!    To  see  ourselves 

*  This  word  has  fallen  out  of  use ;  but  having  it  we 
might  employ  it.  Its  doublet,  "  absorption,"  could  be 
relegated  to  physics,  etc.,  and  "  absorbition  "  kept  for  men- 
tal engrossment.  The  dictionaries  lay  the  stress  on  the 
penultimate ;  but  in  restoring  "  absorbition "  to  the  lan- 
guage, I  place  the  main  accent  on  the  second  syllable. 

J.  D. 


n6  ROAD    AND    RAIL 

As  others  see  us  may  be  good  enough; 
But  to  love  others  in  their  vanities, 
And  to  portray  the  glorious  counterfeit — 
In  sympathetic  ink  that  sympathy 
Alone  can  read  aright, — why  that's  a  gift 
Vouchsafed  to  genius  of  the  rarest  strain! 

At  Lyndhurst-road  the  coach  for  Lyndhurst 
took 
The  turnpike  at  its  best  commercial  pace. 
And  there  the  sun  burst  out  with  moted  beams 
In  handfuls,  clenched  like  sheaves  of  thunderbolts. 
The  riven  clouds,  of  homespun  slashed  and  gored, 
Displayed    through    unhemmed    slits   the   turquoise 

sky,— 
As  tender  as  a  damsel's  bosom-thoughts. 
Across  the  forest's  swarthy-purple  ridge 
A  sparse  shower  twinkled;  but  the  broken  bulk 
Of  vapour,  by  the  sunbeams  bundled  up, 
Slipped  o'er  the  sky-edge  and  was  no  more  seen. 
Like  a  lithe  weapon  by  gigantic  hands 
In  pastance  wielded,  keen  the  brandished  wind 
Whistled  about  us  all  the  uphill  way 
To  Lyndhurst,  where  a  lofty  church  o'erlooks 
The  forest's  metes  and  bounds,  its  modish  spire 
A  landmark  far  and  wide.     But  in  the  glebes 
And   garden-closes  ancient  houses — thatched, 
Of  post-and-panel,  and  with  arching  eaves 


ROAD    AND    RAIL  n7 

About   their   high   and    deep-set   windows — peer 

Occultly  out  of  many  centuries. 

An  old-world  use  and  wont,  the  neighbourhood 

And  venue  of  the  place  are  everywhere 

Presumptive, — in  the   High   Street,  new  and  raw, 

As  in  the  sylvan  faubourgs;  for  a  gust 

Of  burning  log  and  faggot  importunes 

The   passer-by — the   forest's  bitter-sweet 

Aroma,  as  it  turns  to  genial  warmth 

And  toothsome  savour  for  the  villager. 


SONG  FOR  THE  TWENTY-FOURTH  OF 
MAY 


The  character  and  strength  of  us 

Who  conquer  everywhere, 
We  sing  the  English  of  it  thus, 
And  bid  the  world  beware; 
We   bid   the  world   beware 
The  perfect  heart  and  will, 

That   dare   the   utmost   men   may   dare 
And  follow  freedom  still. 

Sea-room,  land-room,  ours,  my  masters,  ours, 
Hand  in  hand  with  destiny,  and  first  among 

the    Powers ! 
Our  boasted  Ocean  Empire,  sirs,  we  boast  of 

it  again, 
Our    Monarch,    and    our    Rulers,    and    our 
Women,  and  our  Men! 

n 

The  pillars  of  our  Empire  stand 

In   unforgotten   graves ; 
We  built  dominion  on  the  land, 

And  greatness  on  the  waves; 
118 


SONG  FOR  THE  TWENTY-FOURTH  OF  MAY     119 

Our  Empire  on  the  waves, 
Established  firm  and  sure, 

And  founded  deep  in  ocean's  caves 
While  honour  shall  endure. 

Sea-room,   land-room,    honourably   ours, 
Hand  in  hand  with  destiny,  and  first  among 

the  Powers! 
Our  boasted  Ocean  Empire,  sirs,  we  boast  of 

it  again, 
Our  ancient   Isles,   our  Lands   afar,   and   all 
our  loyal  Men! 

m 

Our  flag,  on  every  wind  unfurled, 

Proclaims  from  sea  to  sea 
A   future   and   a   nobler  world 
Where  men  and  thoughts  are  free; 
Our  men,  our  thoughts  are  free; 
Our  wars  are  waged  for  peace; 
We  stand  in  arms  for  liberty 
Till  bonds  and  bondage  cease. 

Sea-room,  land-room,   ours,  appointed  ours, 
Conscious  of  our  calling  and  the  first  among 

the  Powers! 
Our   boasted    Ocean    Sovereignty,    again    and 

yet  again! 
Our  Counsel,  and  our  Conduct,  and  our  Arm- 
aments and  Men! 


DATE  DUE 


A     000  686  002     7 


